CLAIM, THE - The New Industrial Ballads (Sealed) (LP)

There is no English or British equivalent of Americana. If there were it might sound something like the New Industrial Ballads and The Claim would be seen as one of the originators of the genre. What we're talking about here is not an English group playing American music. This is a group of musicians making a beautiful and original hybrid that channels the root ingredients of classic English guitar music - folk (Bert Jansch, Nick Drake), thoughtful, melodic pop (Michael Head, Ray Davies) and angular politically tinged pop (Paul Weller, Elvis Costello, Wolfhounds), into something that is contemporary and original