Anyone who thinks the phrase 'it's all been done before' carries real weight clearly has yet to encounter Fair To Midland. Dark, heavy, moving, cryptic, progressive art-rock collides with flourishes of old-school country, Americana and Delta blues in their sound. These Lonestar boys genre-defying and boundary obliterating ocean of sound righteously upends the old phrase 'fair to middling' from which their Texas-ified moniker was drawn.

Arrows and Anchors, the five-piece band's first album in partnership with eOne Music, is meaner, sadder and altogether more desperate of an affair than its predecessors. 'It's a very bitter album,' offers vocalist Darroh Sudderth. 'The last album had some light at the end of the tunnel in some of the subject matter. This one doesn't have that quite so much.'