Fatima Spar and the Freedom Fries are a wild and unique Austrian band with an inventive sound. Trust is the band's second album and came out at the end of last year. The album is beautifully paced, combining jazz and folk of a Balkan and Turkish nature, it also includes the occasional little electronic beat which usually compliments the track perfectly as can be seen with the cool noise on "Biting Creepers".

Fatima Spar has a contemporary jazz voice - a bit like Winehouse only without the spazzy parts, she's also better looking (not exactly difficult) and the lyrics of the band are groovy and stylish. If there is one criticism though it is that her voice is too much the focus of the track and she doesn't give her band time to express themselves as previous greats would have done. It's a shame because what we hear of the pleasant piano playing and enjoyable accordion is excellent but it feels like a taster and I expect a bit of a solo part creeping in from either instrument which fails to materialise.

With 3 songs in German, 8 songs in English and 1 song in Turkish there should be a lot of variation but there's not quite as much as I would expect with some of the tracks in English having a rather similar jazzy beat to them. This is a good album all the same though and the best piece of Austrian music, I've ever heard apart from Stahlhammer (a completely different genre obviously) - sorry Mr. Hasselhoff - you miss out!

Der Tueckebold
Sarabande
Trust
The Good Way
My Little Someone
Die Kleptomanin
Biting Creepers
Knock-Kneed Sal'
Rerun
Overall
Uc Atli
Travelin' All Alone