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The Men They Couldn't Hang have always been a band that are difficult to define in the scheme of things. More a rock band employing folk style than the other way round, too straight for the traveller crowd, too progressive for the folk purists and too obscure to reach the main stream they have hung about in the musical ether for twenty odd years, and a bet most of you reading this have never heard of them. Rising from a collection of small time bands and buskers from London's squat scene TMTCH have been knocking out original and unequalled albums for years and in many peoples opinion, mine included, their defining moment came with 1988's Waiting for Bonaparte. The combination of the punch caricature of Wellington that graces the cover and the song titles themselves give you an idea of where these boys are coming from. But they are no mere actors donning an image for affect; these guys are the real deal, the modern day troubadours keeping alive the spirit of an almost forgotten past. But where there has been a trend in modern times to tap into a half imagined Celtic dreamtime of mysticism and stone circles, heroes and fallen angels, the material here is far more tangible. Like fellow stalwarts, Blyth Power, they are keeping alive a much more recent and relevant slice of history. Their songs repackage and offer up stories from the Industrial Revolution, Nelsons Fleet, Train Drivers and Smugglers. A lesser band could make these themes seem like a bad Boys Own Adventure story, but the mix of historical observation and poetic lyrical content makes this rise above the efforts of lesser mortals.

Waiting For Bonaparte was the bands third album contained some of the bands defining moments and contains many of the live favourites still regularly played by the band. The two previous albums Night of A Thousand Candles and How Green Was My Valley contained moments where you could glimpse future brilliance but showed that the band were still a bit unfocused. Here though, everything just came together in those rare moments of clarity. The album opens with a drone and drum beat which builds until the trade mark mandolin cuts right through your spine and drags you headlong into The Crest, a song of breaking that tradition of going off to war to be sacrificed just because that's what the men of the family always have done. From its country influenced opening licks to the fade out as the band echo away into nothing, The Crest really sets out the store and prepares you for the

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