JOANA Serrat has made her fourth album in five years. This time, she ventured from her home in Vic, Barcelona, to the Texas Hill Country outside Austin, home of the South By South West Festival, where she linked up with Israel Nash at his Plum Creek Sound studio near the town of Dripping Springs. That took care of the album title.

They set to work on recording sessions with Joey & Aaron McClellan, from Midlake and John Grant's ranks; Eric Swanson and Josh Fleischmann from Nash's band; Dave Simonett from Trampled By Turtles and Futurebirds' Dennis Love.

Add Ted Young on engineering duties, with a Grammy Award for his work with The Rolling Stones, and this a haunting Americana record in the Loose tradition, with titles such as Lost Battles, Trapped In The Fog, Walk In Sin and Keep On Fallin' indicating the prevailing mood. Apparently it's "for fans of Neil Young, Mazzy Star and Kurt Vile", but Serrat falls short of those heights.