Heads up, Low Cut Connie fans. Britain’s Swampmeat Family Band is fronted by former LCC member Dan Finnemore. So it’s hardly a surprise that the foursome’s latest album Muck! — their second since Finnemore returned to his Birmingham stomping grounds and reunited with drummer T-Bird Jones — features the same down ’n’ dirty, rough ’n’ tumble garage-rock and back-bar roots-punk as his much-loved former crew (while also bearing more than a passing resemblance to another raggedly glorious band you might have heard of called The Replacements). That’s good news for anybody who needs some new drinking music. The better news: No dress code, no cover, no minimum, and no closing time.
THE PRESS RELEASE: “Four years ago, Swampmeat evolved. After two small-run records and tours that took them across Europe and as far afield as Brazil, the Birmingham garage favourites had been on the back burner for a while, with frontman Dan Finnemore having crossed the pond for a successful stint with Low Cut Connie. He and drummer T-Bird Jones kept Swampmeat alive with sporadic rehearsals whenever Finnemore was back in Britain, but it wasn’t until his time in the States came to an end in 2016 that he began to consider not just reviving the group, but changing the face of it entirely. “I didn’t wanna stop making music, but Swampmeat had always been limiting in terms of my songwriting,” he says. “There’s only so much you can do when there’s just the two of you. I started to think about expanding the band.” With the addition of bassist Richard March (Bentley Rhythm Ace, Pop Will Eat Itself) and guitarist Tommy Hughes (Terror Watts), Swampmeat Family Band was born. This is not a wholesale reinvention — the raw, rock and roll essence of Swampmeat Mark 1 lives on — but it is a true progression. Muck! was recorded in just a week at Priory Studio in Sutton Coldfield, and it continues in the same rich vein as Too Many Things to Hide, whilst also finding room to add fresh flourishes to the ever-advancing Swampmeat sound. The result is their most cinematic record yet. “We wanted this one to be lusher; not necessarily more produced, but for it to have new layers to it. It’s more filmic than before. There’s more there to explore than there’s ever been.”
