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From Cambridge's biggest musical oddity comes the follow-up to last year's happy-clappy 'Jesus Songs'. As with that mini, 'Welcome Home, Loser' is again a country-rock record created with the unlikely trilogy of infidelity, alcohol and God in mind. Below its surface, however, The Broken Family Band's second album is darker and more accomplished than any previous material, intended, it seems, to steer the band well clear of any 'jangly' pigeon-holing.

Now aggressive choruses replace previously upbeat lines, as Where The Hell Is My Baby? demonstrates: "I'm ready to fight him / with my fists and my feet / with my feet and my fists / and my knees and my wrists" Steven Adams howls about his girl's suspected lover. Yet this and the majority of the fourteen tracks here are still sung in such a way that any Bud-swigging trucker would sing along totally oblivious. Thanks to its sly delivery through the unsuspecting medium of country music, 'Welcome Home, Loser' reveals an uncharted sinister side to Cambridge life.

Chris Horkan
February-April 2005

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