Mitch Dillon's Compulsive Ramblers

<a href="spotify:artist:3jKEiSYiv6w31ND7ILw1fn" data-name="Mitch Dillon&#39;s Compulsive Ramblers">Mitch Dillon&#39;s Compulsive Ramblers</a> play rock and roll like it was born under the lights of an early Memphis wrestling ring. The heartbreak is the costume. The ghosts of the city provide the soundtrack. The story is one we all know, but never grow tired of – is this guy going to make it out alive? The guy is Mitch Dillon, an Australian musician who for years has drifted up and down the dusty roads while fronting the screamingly loud Replacements-inspired ‘<a href="spotify:artist:5G2mqnKqivndFgDTKLE0rG" data-name="The Attractor Beams">The Attractor Beams</a>’ (perhaps the greatest Australian band no one had much of a chance to hear). But then something happened – a heart breaks, an axis shifts, and a new sound is born.

With the Compulsive Ramblers, you can hear the twang and bang of Dillon’s past work, but the new group’s debut album offers a complete vision, story, and sonic influences spreading out even further across the American landscape Dillon’s musicianship has always drawn heavily from – not just from <a href="spotify:artist:4WPY0N74T3KUja57xMQTZ3" data-name="The Replacements">The Replacements</a>&#39; Twin Cities, but from early <a href="spotify:artist:2QoU3awHVdcHS8LrZEKvSM" data-name="Wilco">Wilco</a>&#39;s Chicago, Nashville’s Music Row, and, yes, Memphis, where <a href="spotify:artist:3UvcmAOZt64oKpP95f6MMM" data-name="Big Star">Big Star</a> made classic power pop records under the cavernous roof of Ardent recording studio. There’s even a hint of the badlands of <a href="spotify:artist:3eqjTLE0HfPfh78zjh6TqT" data-name="Bruce Springsteen">Bruce Springsteen</a>. But even with American sounds, there is still an Australian filter through which it must pass through, Dillon is not trying to be something he is not, his lyricism contains all the Australian nostalgia of <a href="spotify:artist:0SNWoGaDlrCompmg9rXeNq" data-name="Paul Kelly">Paul Kelly</a>