Brisbane's Wretched Villains manage to successfully mix twangy americana/country music with an unrepentant batcaver swagger on their newest collection "Into the Woods".
The album starts quiet, dark and rural with "King Midnight", a nice bit of banjo laced getting-lost-on-the-way-to-the-crossroads invocation. From there they slip easily into the Concrete Blonde-like piano goth of " Devil's Woods". As these two numbers show the band isn't afraid to pull a wide variety of instruments into the mix. This works particularly well on the pirate western romp of "Skeletons in Her Closet" and on the country cabaret of "Gentlemen of Means". These back-to-back winners would make a solid 7".
Despite (or perhaps *because of*) the goth-tinged vocals The Wretched Villains never take themselves too seriously and luckily they have a 60's garage rock charge that keeps the music full of energy. Hell, on the last song it seems they can't keep the rock under wraps any more and blow the doors off with "Carmilla".
