The Nelson Brothers – Simon and Steve – play a beguiling blend of roots rock, folk and Americana. In over 25 years the British duo have only released two albums under their own name but to those in the know they’ve been ever-present on the scene, whether writing songs in Nashville or winning international acclaim for their liaison with Oscar-nominated American actress Elizabeth McGovern as Sadie and the Hotheads. Now they’re back with their third album, Sacred River. The new record is an enigmatic set of self-penned numbers that revolve, as ever, around Steve’s rich, gravelly vocals and Simon’s elegant but searing guitar. It’s best defined as roots music with many eclectic touches, where you’re as likely to hear a bouzouki as a bass guitar, yet where the songs are always central to proceedings. The Nelsons grew up in Stafford and, as young, enthusiastic musicians in the 70s set off to travel to India with their guitars on their backs. They got as far as Amsterdam where they were won over by the wealth of opportunities to busk in cafes. Returning to the UK they worked in the bars of the sunny South West before answering a Melody Maker ad and winning a dream job playing on the upmarket Atlantic isle of Bermuda. Long sets every night honed their performing skills; like the Beatles in Hamburg, only warmer. They stayed a year, performing and writing, spent six months in New Hampshire US and returned to the UK with a wealth of original songs. After Simon spent a period working in Australia, they linked up in the early 90s with the Round Tower record label, which was working with intriguing country and roots artists from both sides of the Atlantic, including singer-songwriters Tom Russell, Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch, and fiddler Tammy Rogers. The result, in 1993, was the album Hometown, a gentle roots-rock classic, uniting Steve’s rich vocals and Simon’s sensational guitar playing. Though the label folded before the brothers could build on their recording success, a connection led to interest from American publisher and writer Robert John Jones, who’d written songs for the great Buck Owens, Tammy Wynette and Alan Jackson among many others. His organisation in Tucson, Arizona, was working with publishing company Windswept Pacific in Nashville and so started a period where the Nelsons divided their time between writing in Tucson and demoing material in Nashville studios with leading session musicians such as Kenny Malone, Dan Dugmore, Dave Pomeroy and Bryan Sutton. Even now a song, Last Truckstop Motel, written by Steve and RJ in Key West, Florida, and recorded by rising bluegrass star Molly Tuttle, is kicking up a storm on You Tube. Their second album, Places In The Heart, released in 2009, combined a love of a good song with a radical new sound. Imaginative arrangements, touches of jazz and just about every other type of 20th-century music, created a dark, smokey soundscape – ‘Leonard Sinatra’ as RJ Jones christened it, while Elizabeth McGovern said of the album: “The music and the voice and the lyrics all work together to convey a bittersweet, sad optimism that I find so appealing... romantic without being remotely saccharine and refreshingly grown up.” And so to Sacred River, which flows with the gentle rhythm of their early work. Steve sings lead and plays rhythm acoustic guitar as usual, while Simon – also a leading session man who’s played in TV concerts with Mavis Staples and Paul Jones, and at venues such as the Royal Albert Hall and 02 Arena with everyone from Joss Stone to Helen Shapiro to X Factor stars – sticks mostly to electric lead. The album features a host of talented musicians including Ben Nicholls on bass (Seth Lakeman/The Full English/Kings of the South Seas), Terl Bryant on drums (Maddy Prior/John Paul Jones/Barbara Dixon) and the exceptionally talented Greek bouzouki player Lenios Costa Demetriou. Check it out.