COUNTRY

Solal is best known as the French DJ, composer and producer behind the electronica-tango fusion of Gotan Project, so this largely traditional country album comes as a surprise.

Recorded in Nashville with a host of local musicians, and inspired by Neil Young’s Harvest, it’s a heartfelt, sombre record, with a certain downhome charm, but the songwriting is pretty anodyne. Chirping crickets, snippets of conversation and rumbling truck engines are meant to add atmosphere, but only demonstrate the producer’s urge to meddle, while the yee-haw covers of ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘Pretty Vacant’ are as bad an idea as they sound.