The Slow Country’s wholesome alt-folk is a good time, guaranteed

It might not feel like it when you’re going through it, but heartbreak often leads to exciting new beginnings. Just ask alt-folk rabble The Slow Country, who were born from the ashes of two breakups and since then have been slowly evolving into a genuinely thrilling prospect in British music. Armed with seven members, less conventional indie band instruments like an accordion and a violin, and songwriting as evocative as it is rousing, this group’s expansive, joy-filled music is seemingly impossible to have a bad time to. They even, as one song in their live set makes clear, make being “fundamentally fucked” sound like the time of your life. The path to their jubilant sound started from something more sorrowful. Old friends Joe Darley (vocals/guitar) and Charlie Smith (vocals/guitar) both went through relationships ending around the same time. “It was breakup season,” Darley smiles, sitting next to bassist Finnbar Simmonds in the fragrant lobby of London’s The Standard hotel on a grey September afternoon. “We were in a punk band called Paris Syndrome in uni – I’m not sure we ever played a gig; we just liked taking our tops off in practice – but Charlie was the one in the band I was...