Viarosa

During a 2000 discussion with Willard Grant Conspiracy associate Josh Hillman, London-born guitarist and vocalist Richard Neuberg first contemplated assembling a country-and-folk project. Neuberg’s growing disaffection with Britpop had been sharpened by the late-1980s breakup of his relationship with Justine Frischmann, who later guided Elastica to widespread praise; she had departed him for Brett Anderson, joining him as a founding member of Suede in 1989.

Neuberg and Hillman spent several years refining a subdued, Tindersticks-inspired country-noir aesthetic before the permanent sextet Viarosa coalesced in 2004. Edinburgh multi-instrumentalist Rob McHardy supplied banjo, lap steel, mandolin and guitar, London vocalist Emma Seal completed the front line, ex-Cornershop drummer Nick Simms anchored the rhythm section, and Northumberland bassist Mick Young rounded out the lineup. By spring they had tracked the debut album Where The Killers Run, issued in September 2005 to notices that likened its brooding, occasionally gothic folk to the Birthday Party and American Music Club.

Although most of his bandmates were by then full-time musicians, Neuberg continued working days at a friend’s picture-frame company. The group reconvened in summer 2006 to finish a second album and subsequently toured with Lift To Experience’s Josh Pearson. Around the same period Neuberg contributed vocals to a track on Dutch electronica artist Clemm’s Consider The Lilies. Fresh attention arrived later that year when Where The Killers Run received a European reissue. While some dismissed the music as a predictable extension of Americana, listeners drawn to the style remained engaged by Neuberg’s distinctive layering of medieval imagery over country forms.