The Stantons

15th June 2006 by Billy Hamilton

'Tonights Tigerfest offering is a country-soaked ménage of magnetic melody, sumptuous song-writing and dreary detachment. Seven-piece shufflers The Stantons immediately inject zeal into the occasion with smooth pastoral harmonies and delectable hillbilly acoustics. Like the soundtrack to a black and white western, this banjo-led ensemble turns melancholic pondering into a gloriously effusive art-form.' - The Skinny

The Stantons
Welcome to Stanton Country (Pawprint)
By Bernhard Bessing • Nov 5th, 2007 • Category: long players

Geting into character, perhaps, the Edinburgh band are self-confessed cheats and vagrants, but ones who make a remarkable collection of tunes for such a presumably illiterate and miscreant shower – their motto might well be the lyric “the blue of your eyes disguise the black of your heart,” A mix of country and curious rustic sounds, they offer us the likes of ‘Gecko’ with its Waterboys folk and oddball klezmer breaks, while ‘Down By The Lake’ has more banjo on it than can be sensible for a heartbreaking ballad. But it’s the country of the deep south (and I’m not talking Portobello) that pervades this rather wonderful debut album – from the deathly slow harmonised bluegrass of ‘Last Waltz’ to the band’s signature tune, the show-stopping ‘Splinter’. Far-removed from Billy Ray Cirus, this is the dark country of Lambchop or even Johnny Cash, and frankly there is no better place to be.

- Is This Music?