Murder Ballads & Other Love Songs is the debut album by The Heavy Horses, the pseudonym under which Canadian musician Justin Mahoney writes and records songs about outlaws, angels, and murder. 

The album was recorded and mixed in Toronto by Laurence Currie (Amelia Curran/Wintersleep/The Once), and features Canadian talents including Andrew Collins (Creaking Tree String Quartet, The Foggy Hogtown Boys), Max Heineman (The Foggy Hogtown Boys), Christine Bougie (The Good Lovelies, Amy Millan), and Brad Kilpatrick (Hawksley Workman), among others.

﻿Steeped in tradition, and raised on a healthy diet of "the old country", The Heavy Horses are naturally drawn to writing in the same style of music, and make no excuses for it. Although they have never raised a pistol to a man, fled to Mexico, murdered out of love, anger, or murdered "just to watch him die" as Johnny Cash once put it, these themes are abundant in the writing.

If you’ve always wanted to relive the Wild West, or the 70's outlaw country movement – well, those days are gone, but The Heavy Horses aim to get you pretty damn close...

John Waldo is following