Southern Tenant Folk Union: The Chuck Norris Project | Album Review

Hollyweird actor supreme Chuck Norris ludicrously warned in 2012 that “a vote for Obama would bring a thousand years of darkness”.

It set STFU leader Pat McGarvey a-thinking and, using many of Norris’s movies as jump-off points, he explored pressing political issues from his passionate left-wing perspective for the band’s sixth album. That’s the background. The foreground is music of delightful invention, slipping in and out of genres with surprising deftness.

Sure, there is the odd clunk, but this is ambitious music in Punch Brothers vein with only flickers of STFU’s bluegrass origins.

As is now usual with the collective, there are line-up changes, but Rory Butler’s warm voice and Katherine Stewart’s signature fiddle add hugely to the mix. They are currently touring Ireland and worth catching.