Greetings from Tranendal and the Ruiten Aa: Ralph Mulder pays tribute to his youth and East Groningen with Alamo Race Track | review ★★★★☆

The title of the album refers to the area: Tear Valley is the hamlet of Tranendal, The Diamond Ae is the stream Ruiten Aa.

Greetings From Tear Valley And The Diamond Ae was also admitted to the hamlet of Ter Wupping, on his brother’s farm. Painting that farm, the daily routine and cycling trips in the area had helped him find the inspiration he had been lacking for so long; after the plate Hawks From 2015, it was not without reason that the band was quiet for years.

Mulder had returned to his homeland to be close to his mother and sick father; his father Cor died in 2020. The reflection of those essential life experiences can now be heard on the fifth album of Alamo Race Track, which is making a new start with a new line-up.

Robin Berlin and Ellen ten Damme

The group, including guitarist Robin Berlin (from Fatal Flowers and Johan to Udo Lindenberg), produces relatively small, intimate and dreamy pop songs. It is Mulder, in his forties, who releases his reflections in texts that are not immediately understandable.

We hear him sing about a chestnut tree, a house on the edge of town and “my father” ( Romney Shed 1 ). Autobiographical? Surely, that could be possible. Just like the repetitive thing Remember When We Were Young (in which Ellen ten Damme, who grew up in Roden, can be heard modestly) will be an ode to his youth in Groningen.

New chapter

Mulder knows how to give his songs a unique character. These are not pure pop tunes that invite you to join in, but they demand the listener’s attention. It is great that Mulder adds a new chapter with this record to the musical adventure he started more than twenty years ago with Alamo Race Track. A return of one of the most elusive and intriguing bands from record label Excelsior.