Marshall Ford Swing Band: It’s About Dam Time

The Marshall Ford Swing Band came together in 2008 when Jeremy Wheeless and Greg Harkins met Emily Gimble, whose warm bar gal voice gives the oscillations of guitars and percussion a bristly sexy surface to rub themselves up against. The upright piano jangles like Tin Pan Alley when it needs to, and someone occasionally picks up a fiddle. The last track is an adaptation of the folk standard, “The Girl I Left Behind Me”. Other tracks cover the Ink Spots. The old material has been renovated rather than modernised: the scuffed metalwork has been polished shiny and the tyres filled with fresh air, but the chassis retains its integrity. Modern inventions like “Pickles n Tomatoes” don’t sound out of place. Old-time happiness, even when they’re singing about, “Trouble, Trouble”.