Weeping Willows is a collection of supberbly written Americnana songs filtered through the macabre mind of JB Nelson. Nelson's dark tendencies for songwriting are compounded exponentially by the sound created using antique recordings equipement and haunting sounds ranging from JB's ominous voice to the accompanionment of a saw. Beautiful songs, sung with passion and enthusiams are juxtaposed in the album as it decomposes into the unholy sound of Blood on the Walls and Dead Man's Eyes.
Tracklisting:
1. The Dead Walk the Streets
2. Lonesome For You
3. Die With Pride
4. The Deathroom
5. I'll Take You Down
6. Sawney Bean
7. No More Blood
8. Hairy Tree
9. Dead Man's Eyes
10. Blood on the Walls
11. Good Old Boy
12. Weeping Willows
Review from crookedrain.org.uk
Weeping Willows
The album opens in a visceral manner, with ‘The Dead Walk the Streets‘. Sounds like ole JB has OD’d on Zen Arcade till the last 30 seconds when the feedback subsides to reveal a few of JB’s western hallucinations. Second track is ‘Lonesome over you’ and it is awesome, the best I’ve heard this year. Dark, hypnotic and menacing, one of those tracks you stick on repeat while you sharpen the old hatchet and clean the gun. It’s beginning to sound like Hank Williams and Al Jourgensen are scoring a David Lynch road movie. And we continue in this vein with ‘Die with Pride’ and ‘The Deathroom’, both good tracks. ‘Take You Down’ is a cracking revenge tune. A macabre banjo boogie accompanies JBs frankly disturbing lyrics ‘Im goin to finish this bottle and then I’m going to paint my face…..I’m gonna take you down if I cant be with you’ She was his woman and she done him wrong, indeed!
The well woven prose on JB’s site does seem to ring true in one case; his origin. Southwest Scotland is well represented ‘Sawney Bean’ and ‘Hairy Tree’ linking our man to Galloway. Sawney Bean sees Nelson’s industrial claustrophobia return and is genuinely creepy. This song along with the atmospheric ‘No More Blood’ and ‘Hairy Tree’ (Girvan is one strange place!) forms the core of this work. There’s a few mechanised sojourns toward the end which are superfluous, but the refrain from ‘Dead Mans Eyes’ will still be ringing in your ears as you listen.
Nelson has carved a terriffic album here. It’s the sound of a quaalude cowboy hurtling through hell, and stays with you for a long time.