THE Broken Family Band, from Cambridge, are not a family band, but West Londoners The Barker Band are, being led by twins Jake and Sam Barker. Both groups featured in We Dreamed America, last year’s documentary DVD on the growth of Brits drawn to Americana and country music.

By that time The Broken Family Band’s sourpuss-voiced writer Steven Adams had already ditched the faux American accent and now the band has stripped back to a four-piece without the sweetening accordions, banjos or female duets on their seventh album. That smacks of another regrettable casualty of the credit crunch, but if diversity is lost, the world-weary Adams is still a piercing, ominous observer of English life, whose call to “be nice to people” is no more convincing than a Roy Keane smile.

The Barker Band, by comparison, have stuck closer to their adopted American roots on their third outing, albeit with a detour from bittersweet bluegrass to vintage electro-pop for Make Him Stay. Neither Nella Johnson’s voice nor the songwriting carry the distinctive tang of The Broken Family Band, but at least they have an instrumental palette now lost to Adams.