Tracklist

1. Crocodile Shoes
2. Calling Out Your Name
3. Cowboy Dreams
4. Once Upon a Time
5. Only One Heart
6. Bitter and Twisted
7. Love Will Find Someone for You
8. Angel
9. Between a Woman and a Man
10. Don't Wanna Go Home
11. Dragons

Thoughts

Having watched the TV show and loved it, I decided to listen to the album as well. Soundtracks don't always work for this album game, but as this is clearly the work of one man as a project in and of itself, I figured it counted. It's a great country album, that distinctive gravelly voice across some cowboy dreaming songs. I really liked it. There's an album for the second series too but as I enjoyed that significantly less, I might wait a while before listening to that one.

Rating: 4 / 5

Revisited - Aug 2026

Thoughts

I was walking around on a hot, sunny lunchtime and I thought Crocodile Shoes would be just the right thing to listen to. I put it on and was surprised. I only listened to it a couple of months ago, but it hits different. Most of that is driven by the fact that my obsession with Jimmy Nail has grown - watching all of Auf Wiedersehen Pet will do that to a girl.

The opening track, Crocodile Shoes, is pure cowboy and it put me in mind of Wand’rin’ Star as sung by Lee Marvin in Paint Your Wagon. I suspect that’s why I mentioned a gravelly voice in my first review. But that’s not what this is - it’s an unexpected voice. You know that Geordie bricklayer, well, turns out, he has an incredible and emotive vocal, losing the accent, bringing an earnestness and softness that feels like it would take years to develop.

Like Johnny Cash, Nail picks a rhythm and sticks with it. Rather than the train rolling along that Cash prefers, it’s reminiscent of the Wild West, percussive beats mimicking horses hooves. The lyrics echo that too, in track 4: “Once upon a time was a long time ago.” Craving the simple life of the great outdoors and the wide beyond.

The album does slow down in the second half, the ballads kick in and the mood changes to become slightly more saccharine. Between a Woman and a Man is eerily similar to Burt Bacharach and that’s probably not what I’m looking for on a country cowboy album.

So, the score remains unchanged. The songs I love, I love more because now they have a bit of weight behind them and a bit more of a backstory. The second half of the album doesn’t live up to the first and that still knocks a point off. I mentioned above that I was going to wait to listen to the second album and I haven’t done that, I don’t think I will. This is (almost) perfect as it is.

Rating: 4 / 5