The Bottlestoppers / Nathan Conway

Formally known as the T-Town Bottlestoppers, and now it looks like formally known as the Bottlestoppers, Nathan Conway is a man producing rounded alt-country tunes for the last three years.

Let me see if I can get the history right. The T-Town Bottlestoppers were formed circa 2009. They released an album "Run on Diesel" in 2011. Since then there has been changes. As far as I can figure out from Facebook, they became just The Bottlestoppers at the start of this year and then became a solo Nathan Conway project as of the 15th February but you never know with facebook statuses!

On to why we're here; the music. The music of The Bottlestoppers is classic eclectic (probably the worst description ever). The band play a mix of country pop, southern fused blues rock to gentle slow moving americana. They are a group hard to pin down to a genre or even a sub genre which some would see as a negative, I see as something to embrace. You never know what's coming next.

Picking out a few tracks to demonstrate is tough. I was instantly attracted to the track "Little Lamb". I get the sense from it that if americana music originated in Ireland, this would be the genre's signature tune. A song about farming, the soil, buttermilk. This is our version of the ranch, the one man and his horse. That description might sound mawkish but it’s what I get from this song.

"Meanie Mob" starts off as a poppy blues rock number with that surf rock lick but it ends up very different. You're think you're going in one direction, then about 2 minutes in, it becomes one of those screaming bleeding "I told you so" extended codas.

The first of their songs that actually caught my attention was "South Pole Blues". It’s one of those songs you feel like goes on forever, sort of gently floating along the spectrum and that's the feeling I suppose the song is trying to convey. It's similar to the National in the execution but I love the fact that you can hear his accent in the song. Too often singers don't sound like their home and that adds to the song here. The video adds to the songs mood of loss with the grainy black and white pictures. It’s more impressive that it was made by Nathan himself. Lovely stuff.

Their Facebook page is where you will find everything Bottlerstopper and or Nathan Conway related and try yourself to guess if the Bottlestoppers are no more or not. Nathan himself is due to play the Happy Valley Music Festival in Thomastown Kilkenny on the June Bank Holiday Weekend with the River Valley band (which I will be featuring soon). Oh and the Bandcamp page where the album is available for free.