The Oklahoma city of Tulsa, sometimes known as the Capital of Route 66, has a fine musical pedigree, including Johnathon Ford’s project Unwed Sailor.

There’s JJ Cale and Leon Russell, The Gap Band and St Vincent, David Gates of Bread and the dismal Garth Brooks; not a lot in common there.

And there’s sibling popsters Hanson, lovely lads who sang the glorious Motown pastiche Mmmbop and once entertained me for several days in their hometown, so I won’t hear a word said against them. 

If you were trying to define a sound of the city, which is usually associated with JJ Cale, you’d struggle to draw a line between those diverse artists; perhaps because Tulsa is one of the least architecturally interesting cities I have ever visited.

There is also, I now discover, Johnathon Ford, a man who likes a nom de plume.

A bass guitarist by trade, he once recorded under the name Pedro The Lion, and also as Roadside Monument, and has more recently gone by Unwed Sailor.

This latter incarnation is an instrumental hybrid of post-rock and dream-pop, shoegaze and ambient textures, though their/his latest release, PBEAT, dips its toes into more dissonant territory.

It is, consequently, more interesting to me. It bangs and it clatters, with distorted riffs and shards of shimmering guitar breaking through the percussive foundations, Ford’s rumbling bassline keeping things on an even keel.

Ford no longer lives in Tulsa, having formed Unwed Sailor in Seattle before moving through Chicago and Washington D.C.