You can’t accuse The Keys of rushing things. They first appeared as folk rockers Murry The Hump at the arse end of the 90s, but this is the first album in their new incarnation.
The pace is significant because Bitten By Wolves has a slow, dusty stoner-blues feel, lurching from the wry blissed-out, Dandy Warholian The Color Red to the sleepy When You’re Gone, saturated in Byrds-like harmonies, swerving into a sun-baked, Ennio Morricone influenced Western in Heads Of The Valleys.
But while the songs here are warm and enveloping, they lack the spark or focus to come together as a coherent whole, leaving the impression of a sketchbook that still needs filling out after all this time.
