The Shires - brave

British country music? Well there is, and has been a lot of it over the years but lets be honest a lot of it has been... well lets not beat about the bush... crap. Enter duo The Shires to change all of that, instead of tenth rate copying of Nashville favourites or band members trying to drown out each other comes a polished, professional and slick collection of tunes.

The Shires inhabit very much the modern pop end of the country spectrum and of course do songs about drinking but with their very well matched voices they also produce some moments of beauty, "Made in England" is a great song and includes references to fish and chips, so is awesome by default. "Nashville grey skies" and "State lines" have some great melodies. Forget what horrors you may have heard in the past, this is British country, this is so now and this is also pretty damn good.