IF you’re planning a good time out, don’t invite the Webb family. On the evidence of this release, the family that plays together, flays together.

This is a work of almost unremitting bleakness, even if it was mostly penned by Jimmy Webb, one of America’s finest tunesmiths.

The writer of Up, Up And Away, Galveston, By The Time I Get To Phoenix and the irritatingly catchy MacArthur Park has now come up with Cottonwood Farm on which his sons, the Webb Brothers – Christiaan, Justin, James and Cornelius – play too, while Jimmy Webb’s dad, Bob, closes the album with a folksy rendition of Red Sails In The Sunset.

That’s the bright spot among a depressing depiction of rough and unsteady existence down on the farm.

The rest is over-blown, overwrought and, worse, the Webb clan are over here in November to play it live. One to miss.