If Clint Eastwood was a band he'd be this one.

I stole that title. Only because i couldn't have put it any better. I tried, i really did.

It's a great line though, because Hey Negrita are everything that is deep southern fried moonshine-soaked American blues, except they're actually from London. Formed in 2002, and named after the Rolling Stones song, they have released three four albums so far, same sound, but different inspiration each time.

The first album, "We Are Catfish" documents Hey Negrita’s guitarist and vocalist Felix Bechtolsheimers' long-standing battle against heroin and alcohol addiction. It's from that album that "One Mississippi" originates. The track shuffles along with what i read aptly described as "rattling, railroad-track percussion", i love that description, listening to it, it's easy to imagine yourself gazing out the window of some cross country steam train. Though it kind of fucks up any Mississippi river boat metaphor i might have been tempted to use later. Damn.

There's no way on first listening that you'd even begin to suspect Hey Negrita hail from London, i lived there for 6 years and not once did i hear anyone say "I been runnin' down the road a-piece". Not unless it was an American tourist anyway. But this isn't parody, this is the real deal, by their own admission this makes them not particularly radio friendly but it does mean is what you get is straight from the heart.

Last year the band re-recorded, in a blistering 5 hour acoustic session, a dozen tracks and released them, overdub free as the new album, "Burn the Whole Place Down". This version of "One Mississippi" is from that session.

If you like this you'll like pretty much everything else. Sit down, put your feet up and try a bit now, i'm told it goes really well with beer.

davey.