Review: My Darling Clementine with Steve Nieve ‘Country Darkness’

MDC are, of course, Brit husband and wife team Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish who have intelligently and beautifully reinvigorated the country duet over various albums. Nieve, equally of course, is the long-time keyboard campadre of Elvis Costello.

Here they unite, with subtle band, to interpret 12 of Mr Costello’s finest, country-soul gems from down the years, in a manner that is far from a simple country album. The couple’s vocals caress the lyrics with music that is near classical at times, Nieve’s elegant piano along with everything from cello to flugelhorn and yet there’s squeezebox, guitar and pedal steel drifting through.

There’s a dramatic horn-drenched take on Elvis’s collaboration with Paul McCartney, That Day Is Done, an entrancing Heart Shaped Bruise and Indoor Fireworks, accompanied only by Dalgleish’s piano. Elvis’s co-write with the mighty T Bone Burnett, The Crooked Line, gets a playful Tex-Mex feel, I Felt The Chill Before Winter Came, written with Loretta Lynn, is sweet country while his team-up with singer-songwriter Jim Lauderdale, I Lost You, has an understated country-rock feel. Impressive and imaginative.

By Nick Dalton

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Media contact

Zoe Hodges,
Editor, Maverick Magazine

Tel: +44 (0) 1622 823920
Email: editor@maverick-country.com