Bear with me while I get the nostalgia bit out of the way. There was a time in the 1970s when singer-songwriters from the folk world could become massive, making singles and albums that charted and selling out 2,000 capacity venues armed with only an acoustic guitar (usually a Gibson or a Martin at that time). It wasn’t just the odd one or two either; there was strength in depth as well. We had Ralph McTell, John Martyn and Richard Thompson (among others) in the UK and North American continent had Gordon Lightfoot, James Taylor and Neil Young (when he wasn’t squeezing squalls of feedback out of Old Black. Rupert Wates would have fitted in perfectly with his virtuoso finger-style guitar and mix of traditional and modern lyrical themes. Skip forward five decades and folk music’s a minority interest again. Which is why I have such a great admiration for artists like Rupert Wates. He does what he does in the knowledge that it’s a labour of love and that’s pretty common in certain areas of today’s music business.
The eleven songs on ‘Elegies’ are love songs but, as the title implies, they all convey a sense of loss as well. The musical stylings reflect the lyrical content of the songs; the more traditional folk-style lyrics tend to have fairly conventional guitar stylings while the contemporary lyrics lean towards a jazz feel, particularly when Trifon Dimitrov joins the party on double bass. Of the traditional lyrical songs, ‘Guinevere’ is based on ‘Malory’s ‘Morte d’ Arthur’ with hints of the Robin Hood legend, ‘Lady of the Glades’ is based on Keats’ ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ and ‘Across the Water’ derives from Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott’. ‘The Storm’, with its high-register vocal, is inspired by Poe and Coleridge and builds and darkens musically to reflect the ominous oncoming weather. ‘The Man Who Worked in Clay and Stone’ has a more modern feel and arrangement underpinning a message that you should be careful what you wish for because ultimate beauty is ultimately sterile.
Of the more modern lyrics, ‘Cathy’ is a love song with a smoky jazz club feel enhanced by the double bass, and ‘We’ll Go Dancing’ is a love song set in Paris that also hints at the speakeasy era of the 1930s in the States. It’s a mark of Rupert Wates’ craft that he’s able to create such a variety of moods with one or two guitars, occasional double bass and vocal.
‘Elegies’ is Rupert Wates’ twelfth album and it demonstrates perfectly why he’s an award-winning songwriter and performer. He’s a genuine virtuoso acoustic guitar player who plays with the kind of subtlety that you won’t be hearing on mainstream radio any time soon. If you’re in the UK and you want to see and hear him play, he has one UK date at The Cabbage Patch in Twickenham on Sunday October 1st.
So, no pressure then. Palomino Studios in LA was booked by Water Tower for the day after a two-month tour while the tour energy was still fresh and everything would be recorded live in one day. It was traditionally the way string bands recorded; get everyone around a mic and the volume adjustment is done by moving away from or closer to it. Should have been relatively easy until the car broke down and the upright bass fell apart cutting four hours out of their session time. And they only managed to limit the songs to fifteen (or sixteen if you split out the opening segue). No pressure at all but, for performing musicians shit like this happens day in and day out. I’ll come back to that later.
I like the idea of the traditional string band; musicians who play and sing to a really high standard in a live or studio setting while keeping an Appalachian tradition alive. But things also move on and Water Tower do a couple of things that help keep the style fresh; they approach it with a sense of humour (not untypical in string bands) and they happily throw in influences from other musical styles and not always what you might expect; how about the percussive acoustic guitar-led cover of Tupac’s ‘California Love’? The link is the location, but I certainly wouldn’t have seen that one coming.
The album opens with a solo banjo version of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ (no Hendrix pyrotechnics, just tight, technical playing featuring some nice double-stopped passages) which leads into a cover of Doc Watson’s ‘Reuben’s Train’ showcasing the talents of all the players. The traditional string band tunes that give all the players the chance to improvise and show their abilities form the backbone of the album; ‘I See the Light’ is a slow triple-time piece with a high-register Kenny Feinstein vocal and intertwining banjos, ‘Lonesome Blues’ rattles along with instrumental virtuosity and superb harmonies and ‘Stay the Night’ flies along at breakneck speed hinting at the pace of the recording process, particularly in the spoken outro. And there’s a version of ‘Cotton Eyed Joe’ (yep, the same one that Swedish band Rednex covered when the UK rave scene finally jumped the shark).
These tunes are all great fun but the album becomes really distinctive when the influences that the induvial band members bring feed into the songs. ‘Radio’ is punk Americana with a couple of Clash references, ‘George Washington’ highlights our mortality and transience while taking a sideswipe at internet conspiracy theories and ‘Skante Warrior’ digs into the dark world of meth-heads which is contrasted with the gorgeous falsetto Beach Boys/Four Seasons harmonies. And then ‘AM PM’, with a Jackson Browne/David Lindley feel is a very rare thing indeed, a song about supermarket price offers.
Coming back to the recording process, everything was recorded live in two takes for each song and it’s mainly the first takes that feature on the album. There are three things about this album that grabbed my attention; the playing and singing are outstanding, it feels like the band are having fun and it made me explore a concept that I had no knowledge of (the urban mythology of meth-heads explored in ‘Skante Warrior’). Enjoyment and instruction.
‘Live from Los Angeles’ is a great capture of the live energy of Water Tower and it’s released in the UK on Friday August 11th. If you want to capture the real thing in the UK, Water Tower will be touring the UK and Ireland from August 10th. You can find the dates here.
As an extra bonus, here’s a live video of ‘Take Me Back’:
‘Into the Light’ is the second John Williams Syndicate album. My only minor reservation about the first album ‘Out of Darkness’ (both titles inspired by the motto of his hometown, Wolverhampton) was that with so many guest performers it lacked a little bit of cohesion. That certainly doesn’t apply to ‘Into the Light’. There’s still a long list of guest performers but John has conjured up a unity for the album with a sixties feel combined with twenty-first century production techniques that makes it feel simultaneously contemporary and nostalgic, drawing on all of his previous experience as record plugger, label manager, head of A&R, producer, songwriter and recording artist.
For the second album, John has stuck with the idea of combining established artists with relative newcomers to the business. There are guest vocals from the legendary Petula Clarke, Claudia Brücken, Nicki Leighton-Thomas and John Moore (of Jesus & Mary Chain and Black Box Recorder fame) while the relative newcomers and under the radar guests are represented by Natasha Panas, rapper/singer Slicko and Isabella Coulstock (currently supporting The Who after a tour supporting Jools Holland). John blends all of these elements together seamlessly with his arrangements and production.
Of the ten tracks on ‘Into the Light’, there isn’t one that has the finger even hovering over the skip button and they work beautifully together, however I do have to mention a few of my own personal highlights. ’You’re My Number One’ works perfectly on all levels; it’s a list song packed with sixties and seventies references driven along by an incredibly catchy guitar hook and a Nicki Leighton-Thomas vocal at the lower end of her range that evokes Marianne Faithfull from her gravelly ‘Broken English’ incarnation. ‘In My Dreams’ is also full of musical and lyrical historical references. Petula Clarke shines vocally on ‘Luminescent’, which is driven along by a simple repeated piano figure, while Claudia Brücken does the same on the Portishead-influenced ‘As Long As You are there for Me’ which builds gradually from a drum pattern and guitar feedback before finishing on stripped-back piano and vocal. ‘I Want to Lose Myself in You’ is a bit of fun that opens with an organ intro that hints at Vanity Fare’s ‘Hitchin’ a Ride’ and maybe ‘I’m Always Touched by your Presence Dear’. Just imagine Blondie with a banjo.
It’s also great to see that John, as he did with ‘Out of Darkness’, is bucking the streaming/download trend. The CD version of this album comes with sumptuous packaging that enhances the musical experience. ‘Into the Light’ succeeds in the same way that St Etienne did in the nineties by capturing the mood and feel of an earlier while era using contemporary production techniques. It’s a tricky one to get right, but this album aces it.
‘Into the Light’ is released on Friday July 28th on Wulfrun Records (Wulfrun2).
Here’s the video for ‘In the Morning Sun’:
There’s a sweet spot where blues, rock and soul intersect with big guitar riffs, keys and horns. Chicago found it in the seventies, Southside Johnny has made it his lifetime’s work and Springsteen hit it perfectly with his soul covers album ‘Only the Strong Survive’. ‘Time Bomb’ is right in the centre of that sweet spot. Jan James has, as they say, paid her dues on the local Chicago scene in clubs, festivals and theatres, picking up a lot of respect along the way.
The influences she’s been exposed to shine through on ‘Time Bomb’, from the opening jazzy lilt of ‘Swingin’ in the Sweet Sunshine’ to the pure blues of the appropriately-named closing song ‘Always the Blues’. There are songs in traditional blues stylings; ‘Too Late Now’ is a slow blues given a country tinge with the piano part ‘Let Love Surround You’ is a slow blues, opening with a clipped guitar part that gives way to an over-driven guitar in the chorus. What’s noticeable on the album is that although Jan James has a powerhouse voice, it’s kept under a tight rein most of the time and doesn’t very often get into Janis Joplin territory.
‘Don’t It Feel Good’ has a midtempo soul feel while the anti-materialistic ‘Diamonds and Gold’ and the femme fatale song ‘Time Bomb’ both hint at eighties productions. The songs that jump out as being a little different are the two that address social and political issues. In Jan’s words, “All of the songs from ‘Time Bomb’ are inspired by the times we are living in.” ‘Desperate Times’ is a slow piece with some subtle keys that laments the state of the world but acknowledges that we all still need to carry on. ‘Blood on Your Hands’ has a much more direct message; it’s squarely aimed at Donald Trump for his part in the January 6th insurrection and it’s angry, very angry.
If you’re expecting an album of standard 12-bar blues tunes, ‘Time Bomb’ should be a pleasant surprise. You’ll find classic blues but you’ll also find elements of soul, country, swing, eighties FM rock and more besides. The arrangements are all classy and Jan’s vocal, which can go all the way to eleven on the raucous scale, is generally controlled throughout the album; powerful but controlled, and it’s refreshing to hear a few elements of the protest song in the mix as well. ‘Time Bomb’ is a collection of songs that work on a musical and lyrical level with some powerful and restrained musical performances. What’s not to like?
‘Time Bomb’ is released in the UK on Friday July 27th on Blue Palace Records (BPR 33318).
Paddy McAloon described the working title of his 1990 Prefab Sprout masterpiece ‘Jordan: The Comeback’ as ‘Death and Elvis’. Jeb Barry could have had a working title of ‘Death and Death’ for his third pandemic album ‘Weeds’. Jeb’s inclination is naturally towards the melancholic and the album centres around the impact of COVID and the impact of the death of John Prine in particular, so don’t expect too many laughs. The songs are beautifully constructed miniatures with sparse arrangements built around acoustic guitar and bass with additional colour from occasional accordion, banjo, harmonica and fiddle solos and fills. The production, co-helmed with long-time collaborator Josh Pisano has a very organic live folk feel, keeping Jeb’s vocal front and centre and sometimes doubled up to reinforce its plaintive, keening quality. Across the album, Jeb’s voice emphasises and accentuates the painful subjects of the songs.
The opening song on ‘Weeds’ is almost cheerful in that it’s only about a break-up rather than a death. It’s the album’s obligatory Big Star-ish song and comes complete with an accordion solo; from there on, things get a bit darker, apart from the slide guitar-punctuated title song which talks about the metaphorical weeds we trip over before the song turns to positivity with angels watching over us.
Most of Jeb Barry’s songs are Carver-style vignettes, picking up on small events in people’s everyday lives. The death of ‘Miss June’ echoes the lonely death of the more famous ‘Eleanor Rigby’, while ‘Preacher’ and ‘All Girls Break Hearts’ are fairly straightforward stories of broken romances. The really punchy songs for me on ‘Weeds’ are the ones where personal stories are intertwined with social or political themes.
‘The COVID Unit’ combines the idea of losing people to the virus with the selfishness or stupidity of people refusing to wear masks over a mid-tempo country rock arrangement while ‘Generation Lockdown uses a similar styling to combine themes of lockdown and its impacts with the other American virus of school shootings, which is particularly relevant as Jeb’s day job is teaching high school. There’s a gentle power in every song on the album; ‘The War’ is an exploration of PTSD, ‘James’ deals with coping with the untimely death of an old friend, while ‘Twine’, a song about barely holding things together, is a tribute to John Prine.
Jeb Barry describes ‘Seeds’ as his folk album. The arrangements are mainly traditional string band stylings and there are elements of protest in the songs as well. There are many fascinating stories, all sung in Jeb’s laconic, fragile high tenor with arrangements that rely on feel and skill rather than power and clever studio techniques. It’s organic without descending into lo-fi territory. Every song fits in neatly, even the singalong (shoutalong?) simplicity of ‘Baby Got Drunk’. There are stories and messages aplenty and you can’t beat an album that begins with a song that’s a tribute to Alex Chilton.
‘Weeds’ is released in the UK on Dollyrocker Records (DR20231) on Friday July 21st.
I see a lot of artists performing live on the independent London circuit; most of them are good, some of them are great and occasionally you hear something that blows you away. I’ve had a couple of those over the last few years; one of them was the first time I saw Si Connelly play a band set live at Hope and Anchor in November 2021. What I saw left me absolutely stunned; a performer who took the stage in a basement in Islington and held nothing back in his playing and vocals and he was photographic gold; so expressive and so committed. I was hooked and I’ve caught as many of his shows as I can since then, including the launch for his latest album ‘Nevertheless’ a couple of weeks ago. at Blues Kitchen in Brixton.
In 2022, Si released an EP every month and he’s moved on to albums this year. To say he’s prolific as a songwriter is a huge understatement, but it’s not just about quantity; the songs are all superbly crafted and the performances, particularly the vocals, are out of the top drawer. About those vocals; Si’s range is exceptional, particularly at the high end and he uses it to great effect both in the studio and live. So, what about ‘Nevertheless’?
It’s an album that demonstrates the breadth of Si’s writing, playing and singing; from the big rock riff opener ‘Gimme More’ to album’s gentle closer ‘Sea of Change’ with its folk feel and stripped back vocal and acoustic guitar treatment. It’s a lot like Neil Young, moving seamlessly from introspective acoustic to rock-out electric. Si’s equally adept at either end of that scale.
There’s an art that great songwriters and performers have of incorporating influences without actually stealing anything and there are couple of great examples of this on ‘Nevertheless’. ‘Hold Me’, with its huge dynamic range is a nod in the general direction of Prince’s ‘Purple Rain’, while ‘How Do You Love Me’, with its sixties soul feel emphasised by the keyboard parts, hints at the lyrical structure of Sam Cooke’s ‘You Send Me’ repeating lines with slight changes as the verse unfolds.
If you need an introduction to Si’s work, ‘Nevertheless’ isn’t a bad place to start. It features rock, soul and acoustic elements and demonstrates Si’s powerful use of dynamics while showcasing his exceptional voice. It’s a great piece of work but I can’t leave this without saying that you can only get the full Si Connelly experience by seeing him play live either solo or with his band – that’s an experience you won’t regret and you won’t forget.
‘Nevertheless’ is out now on all of the digital platforms.
Find it here on Spotify:
Here’s the video for ‘Winter’s Song’:
It’s easy to see why Malcolm Holcombe is admired by so many songwriters. His lyrics are economical, perhaps even terse at times, conveying ideas and stories by hints and allusions rather than as a simple narrative and creating rhythmic textures with his finger-picking style. The album’s a two-hander with Jared Tyler supplying tonal colours to Malcolm’s songs (as he has for nearly twenty-five years) with a wide variety of instruments including dobro, lap steel, baritone guitar, tenor banjo, mandola and percussion. Malcolm’s finger-picking and Jared’s backing and fills give the songs a rhythmic complexity that emphasises the starkness of the lyrics.
‘Bits & Pieces’ is an album where Malcolm takes a long look in the rear-view mirror at the times he’s enjoyed and the times he’s survived; there’s a reason for this. Malcolm was diagnosed with cancer in 2022 and decided to record these songs straight away because of the uncertain future. He’s now a cancer survivor as well and this is referenced in ‘Bootstraps’ with the lines “blood bleedin’ in your stomach, saline flowin’ your veins”. Malcolm’s lyrics can be oblique, leaving you wondering whether you’re chasing the right reference, although it’s clear that ‘Eye of the Needle’, ‘Rubbin’ Elbows’ (with the COVID reference) and ‘Another Sweet Deal’ are talking about hucksters and grifters and possibly even the Trump family. You can find a few religious references in there as well, in ‘Eye of the Needle’ mentioned above, ‘Bring to Fly’ and ‘Conscience of Man’. Sometimes you need to delve a little to unpick the references, but it’s always worth the effort.
There are a couple of standouts for me and they’re side by side on the album. ‘The Wind Doesn’t Know You’ takes a whistle-stop tour through Malcolm’s past (‘lock the doors and windows turn the music up louder, from the eighties to the nineties from the pills to the powder’) before acknowledging that in the grand scheme of things, we play a very small part. ‘Conscience of Man’ hints at the early Eagles albums in its arrangements and harmonies as it rails at the American right wing before admitting that redemption might just be possible. And the theme of redemption suffuses the album’s closer ‘Bring to Fly’ to end the album on a positive note.
If you already know Malcolm Holcombe’s work, you’ll find this a very satisfying album. If you don’t know his work, then this is a pretty good place to start.
‘Bits & Pieces’ is out now on Proper Music/Need To Know.
Here’s the lyric video for the album’s title song:
One of the many things I love about Bob Bradshaw is that he still firmly believes in the idea of the album; twelve songs (give or take one or two) chosen because they fit together and sequenced in a way that’s pleasing to the ear. Another thing I love is that he always likes to throw a few curveballs; just when you think you’re listening to an album of straight-ahead rock or Americana, he throws in something that stops you in your tracks. It can be an unexpected musical styling or an unusual melodic shift, or something else entirely.
‘Somebody Told Me a Lie’ is a perfect example; the theme of the song’s a cheating partner and it’s delivered with a crooner vocal and a Hawaiian shuffle setting with lap steel licks. The shock comes in the brief shift from common time to triple time to emphasise the line “While she was waltzin’ round the room”. It’s deliberately disorientating, emphasising the jolt of the realisation of infidelity. Bob does the straightforward rock stuff very well (the album’s opener ‘Waiting’ and the self-deprecatory ‘Hot in the Kitchen’ are conclusive proof of that) but he really shines as a storyteller, whether the stories are entirely fictional or based on reality, particularly when he tailors the musical stylings to the memorable subject matter.
Here’s a couple of examples for you. ‘The Silk Road Caravan’ is based around historical events while focussing on the story of the special partnership between man and horse. The arrangement reflects the geographical setting with a slightly Arabic and very percussive arrangement. An even better, and more harrowing example of this musical and lyrical synergy appears in ‘Rosa’ the story of a man attempting to break out across the Mexican border to start a new life before calling his sweetheart to join him. The song begins with a church bell and a flamenco guitar and builds through several sections until the panicked finale with squalling guitars and atonal trumpet (played by Calexico’s Jacob Valenzuela) indicating that the attempted breakout has failed disastrously. It’s a superb demonstration of the music playing a huge part in carrying the story forward.
There’s usually a bit of humour on a Bob Bradshaw album; ‘The Art of Feeling Blue’ is no exception. The title song is a slightly skewed, mocking take on melancholy, while ‘Thought I Had a Problem’ explores the characters that buy into the rock excess lifestyle, in this case “Weed and speed, moonshine, white wine and gin.” The cast of musicians is excellent as ever and a special mention goes to Kris Delmhorst (a hugely talented singer-songwriter in her own right) for her evocative backing vocals on seven of the twelve songs. There’s a huge amount of variety across the album as well as a sense that you’re never too far away from another pleasant surprise.
‘The Art of Feeling Blue’ is released in the UK on Friday June 16th on Fluke Records (FR12).
Here’s the video for ‘The Silk Road Caravan’:
Twenty-three albums in and still creating powerful and memorable songs; I guess most songwriters would be happy with that. What ‘55’ has in common with most of the albums reviewed here recently is the influence of the pandemic still looms large in the way the album came together and in the subject matter of some of the songs. The influence that Ellis Paul’s latest album doesn’t have in common with recent albums is that it was written and put together in the shadow of Ellis Paul’s diagnosis with Dupuytren’s Contracture which over a period of time pulls the fingers into a fist shape. There’s probably nothing more terrifying for a professional performing musician. One other thing, Ellis listened to The Beatles a lot during the making of ’55’ and happily admits to the influences of the Fab Four on the finished album.
The quality of the songs is superb throughout from the gentle, lilting opener ‘Cosmos’ with its bitter-sweet lyrical reference “And I used my hands till they turned to sand” to the closer ‘A Song to Say Goodbye’ telling the story of the start and finish of a romance. There’s a love song to his partner Laurie MacAllister (who delivers some stunning harmonies across the album), while ‘Be the Fire’ is advice from a father to a child.
The two songs showing the strongest Beatles influences are ‘The Gift’, a story of friendship that has a very George Harrison guitar sound while ‘Tattoo Lady’ has crowd noise and circus themes that reference ‘Sergeant Pepper’. And that’s all before we get to the three songs that push all of my buttons.
‘Holy’ is a fictitious tale of an Irish dreamer, Declan McClaren who wants to travel to America to reignite an old flame. As the arrangement builds, it adds more Celtic elements to the mix, evoking the feel of rushing ahead by train during Declan’s escape. The twist in the tale comes when we realise that the ship he’s boarding is The Titanic. The song’s ambiguous about the fate of the central character, but the records show that a man named McClaren did survive the disaster. ‘When Angels Fall’ is a song with a political message written after the Uvalde school shooting. It’s written from the shooter’s viewpoint, apart from the chorus, which has a clear message ‘Fight for your guns, or fight for your children’.
The album’s title song is a wistful look at surviving until the age of 55 in the time of pandemic. It’s a combination of nostalgia for the things superseded in our lifetimes, celebration of survival and a memorial for those we’ve lost; the death of John Prine gets a mention as well as the wholesale cancellation of gigs because of the pandemic. The twist comes in the tail again with the positive emphasis of Ellis’s daughter. These three songs alone make the album essential listening; add the remaining nine and you have a classic of its genre.
‘55’ is released in the UK on Friday June 9th on Rosella Records (ROSELLA002).
Here’s the official video for ‘Gold in California’ from the album:
It’s just over three weeks since the World Health Organisation declared that COVID is no longer an emergency and a couple of years since it peaked, but the impact of the virus is still being felt, particularly in the fields of music and leisure. This Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors album was written on either side of the pandemic and pulled together in a way that couldn’t have happened during the emergency. Drew and his band spent eight days in a studio in Asheville NC, playing the songs live and searching for the perfect take. It’s a process with an element of risk but it works if you have good songs and good players; ‘Strangers No More’ has both of those in abundance. Lyrically, the album’s largely positive, emphasising the way forward rather than looking back, and reflecting Drew’s new outlook and more relaxed attitude to performance.
Drew Holcomb’s blessed with a versatile voice, equally at home on the tub-thumpers like ‘Dance with Everybody’ which hints at Springsteen, The Waterboys and Paul Simon’s African experiments, and the more reflective triple time ‘Gratitude’ with its soaring chorus and vocal that resembles Ian Matthews in the mid/late seventies. In fact, the seventies influence looms large throughout the album, sometimes where you least expect it. The album also showcases Drew’s vocal range and the band’s superb use of dynamics, shifting effortlessly from gentle acoustic arrangements to full-on widescreen E Street band arrangements; there’s plenty of variety, all held together by tight arrangements and the quality of Drew Holcomb’s voice.
And what about some of those other seventies references? ‘That’s On You, That’s On Me’ is a wake-up call song that opens with a nod to ‘Stuck in the Middle With You’ and moves on through rock guitar riffs with a country rock feel as the song progresses. ‘Possibility’ and ‘On a Roll’ both have an E Street Band feel while the latter also has a soundscape that seems to reference The Blue Nile. The big surprise is ‘Strange Feeling’, which opens with a ‘Darlington County’ style riff before, morphing into an early seventies Steely Dan sound complete with a guitar solo that could be the legendary Jeff Baxter.
Drew Holcomb and the neighbours succeed in pulling together a variety of styles and influences to create an album feels at the same time familiar and wholly original where everything is there to serve the song. This album will make you think, make you smile and make you want to dance like no-one’s watching – you can’t ask for more than that.
‘Strangers No More’ is released in the UK on Friday June 9th on Magnolia Music.
Here’s the video for ‘Dance with Everybody’:
