It is funny how things turn out sometimes. Four months ago, Austin Texas duo Twilight Hotel were turning up in various MM End-of-Year-Best-Of Lists following the release of their superb album When The Wolves Go Blind.

On Saturday they turned up at the fag-end of their UK tour just a few miles from chez Mackerel playing a free show at the rather lovely, and certainly intimate, Brasenose Arms in Cropredy – a tiny village outside the turgid town of Banbury.

Cropredy has form though, being as it is, the spiritual home of fiddley-dee, finger-in-the-ear, muesli sweatered, folk legends Fairport Convention and their annual festival. The Brasenose plugs happily into these traditions and boasts a small room for live performances concentrating on “the best in blues and roots music”

And so it was, accompanied by Chris T Popper (who has form of his own when it comes to Fairport and one fair maiden in particular – hey nonny no) that we turned up ourselves, real ale in hand, to watch one of our most anticipated gigs of 2012 so far.

As if they knew the audience would be in the “win me over” mould or just impatient to prove their credentials, the opening salvo was a strong one – the title track from Wolves, the rhetorically despondent What Do I Know About Love? and the spaghetti western road trip extraordinaire of Mahogany Veneer. Three album highlights that briefly, nay wonderfully, muted the hum of self-important blah, blah, blah from the back of the room.

Despite the omnipotent hum of the “I was there, but I’m not really here” crowd, Brandy Zdan and Dave Quanbury were undeterred. Switching effortlessly from folk ballads to the swamp delta and back again it was a thrilling diversion into the threatening crackle of Ham Radio Blues that was the highlight of the first set and gave them a narrow points victory over the chatterati.

So ten songs down they regrouped to plan their strategy for Round 2, for it would also be the increasing extrovertism of the demon ale they would now be battling too. Popper and I feared for them, we’d surely had the best they had to offer already, and with only one more gig in Blighty to go before heading home to an uncertain future for the band, it must have been tempting to have given up and just gone through the motions.

Not a bit of it. The second set was a knockout. Bobbing and weaving between the raw blues wail and moan of tracks like Iowalta Morningside and My Daddy to the stunning folk reflections of The Master and Impatient Love, the hum first quietened and then died completely. We were on a roll now, and from front to back and even behind the bar, heads nodded, feet tapped and tongues were stilled as they sashayed through to the end of the night sweeping all before them with the infectious, crackling, stomp of Viva La Vinyl. Two encores later and Twilight Hotel were finally checking out of The Brasenose still undefeated and en-route for a final bout in Nottingham.

Download Twilight Hotel – Iowalta Morningside mp3 (from Highway Prayer)

Download Twilight Hotel – Viva La Vinyl mp3 (from Highway Prayer)

Download Twilight Hotel – Ham Radio Blues mp3 (from When The Wolves Go Blind)

Download Twilight Hotel – Mahogany Veneer mp3 (from When The Wolves Go Blind)

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