It genuinely saddens me that Spain never achieved any sort of lasting success, because although the second and third albums didn’t live up to the wonderful debut ‘The Blue Moods of Spain’, they really did make some lovely music. The main mover in the band was Josh Haden, son of the rather amazing Charlie Haden (and in fact he’s one of triplets, with his sisters both being very credible musicians in their own rights too), famous for his career with Ornette Coleman.

Anyway, that’s not so relevant here, ‘Blue Moods’ is a really lovely album, which doesn’t really put a foot wrong. Haden has a lovely timbre to his voice, and the production is very stylised, with a lot of treble on the guitars, and a smokey feel to the whole thing. The album is low tempo and subtle, with sparse arrangements that allow the songs to come through in a very natural way.

They don’t really suit singles, and ideally I’d recommend listening to the full album if you can, but as a taster, here are a couple of live songs from a 2007 reunion of the band:

Haden has put a new incarnation of the band together, and they’ve released one ep, and done some touring. If you’d like to check out more, try here – http://www.spaintheband.com/.