In some ways, vocalist Tex Perkins (The Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon) has American guitar pioneer Link Wray to thank for his debut album with The Fat Rubber Band. When Perkins told producer and songwriter Matt Walker that he’d been given a rare vinyl copy of Wray’s 1973 album Beans and Fatback, Walker suggested they record an LP in the same vein. Cue The Fat Rubber Band and this record of ragged, country-fied acoustic-electric blues that sounds like it was written in a swamp; as crickets chirp and frogs gurgle in atmospheric closer “Out There”, sounds like it may well have been recorded in one, too. (In reality, it was captured at Walker’s Stovepipe Studios in Dandendong, Victoria.) Perkins and Walker have worked together before—the guitarist played in the theatrical production of Perkins’ The Man in Black: The Johnny Cash Story—and here they’re joined by bassist Steve Hadley, drummer Roger Bergodaz and percussionist Evan Richards. The subject matter fits the feel of the music, the songs full of characters for whom “trouble always comes to me” (“Danger Has Been Kind”) and who “never had much luxury” (“Place in the Sun”). They do, however, have a home in this rich collection of songs.