A recent featured album on Brum Radio, JOHN NAPIER’s The Man In Me (available via Bandcamp) is steeped in a love of Paul McCartney whose influence glows throughout this terrific mini-album. He’s not the only touchstone though, conscious or otherwise. The opening riff of ‘The Exception’ suggests their creator, Andrew Souer, had a slower take on the intro to ‘Marrakesh Express’ in mind, Olly Forrester’s shuffling drums joining the acoustic guitar that carries along a number aimed at those who reckon they’re going to be the one to make a difference and “triumph where no one else has done”, pointing out the million times before others have assumed the same only to find their efforts are in vain. Essentially, a cynical song about expecting things to get better.
Wryly borrowing from the ‘Three Lions’ chorus, ‘It’s Coming Home’ is the first McCartney-tinged number, a warm psych-60s folk pop tinted scuffed swayer that kind of continues the idea that things will just drop into our laps and everything will be fine but spun into a commentary on those who harbour sense of superiority and privilege (“the world belongs to us/There's no use protesting, it's our destiny/To sit at the top of this hierarchy/A natural order, why can't you agree?”) with the well-rehearsed politician’s argument that the pains of change are all for the common good (“What seems like brutality’s all done with love”).
Another evocation of 60s folk pop that musically sounds as though it might have come from some children’s TV show, ‘Not Your Enemy’ has a woodpecker clicking percussive bedrock and synth flute on a song that speaks of how people, gender, races, sexual orientation, whatever are proscribed and lumped in a single entity (“Reduced to a member of one single tribe …viewed through a prism of violence and vice…Stripped of your agency, dehumanised”) and, while admitting “there are patterns that can’t be denied”, the fact remains that “Each individual’s one of a kind”. Hence the title choruses refrain and the plea not to see foes when none exist.
Clocking at under two-minutes, the vocals mixed back but rising on the refrain a la ‘Twist and Shout’, the ‘Same Old Conversations’ takes its musical cues from the folksier strums of Revolver and maybe even Joe Brown on a number that sounds like a wry commentary on getting older and stuck in your ways (“Same old conversations, same old dumb beliefs/What the hell is happening to me?!... All there is now is tumble-weed/Who drained the colour from my dreams?”).
With a guitar line that evokes ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’, the title track kind of continues the line of thought of somehow falling short of your expectations (“Faith tells me there is something more to me/But fate has not dealt me the hand I thought I'd see”, but still holding fast to a determination make it so (“Well I may not be the man I thought that I was s’posed to be/But I still believe the answer lies in me/Cause I made a vow so long ago that I intend to keep/And I won't give up until the world has seen/Oh, the man in me”). It also harks back to the opener as he sings “What makes you think that you are special?/What makes you think you are the one?/When there are millions more just like you/Who think the world has got it wrong”, with the observation that “You don't deserve it and you sure as hell ain't earned it/Perhaps it's time you moved along”. But it comes with an implicit faith in the capability of the individual to do something bring about some kind of revolution because “change/Is never gonna happen without me”, even if you don’t yet know how.
It ends with the near six-minute fingerpicked dislocated rhythm standout that is ‘The Dissident’, a song addressed to those “Drunk on vicarious smugness… who think all of my yearnings/Are unpatriotic at best” and how those who don’t conform to the majority opinion are inevitably regarded as having some personal agenda (“Passion is viewed with suspicion/As is ideology”) and that, quite frankly, they should be happy with what they’ve got and not that they’re entitled to anything more. The message to those who see themselves as “some kind of bastion/Of clear-headed rationality” is that their so-called wisdom is just a form of misanthropy, or, succinctly summed up “The ones least concerned are the ones who think most cynically”.
Released at the end of the month, The Space Between is the second album from (largely) instrumental al-folk outfit BONFIRE RADICALS, comprising Pete Churchill on organ, bass and accordion, drummer Ilias Litzos. Sarah Farmer on violin and viola, Kate Steven on clarinet, Michelle Holloway on recorders and – where applicable – lead vocals with the female answer to Etic Clapton, the amazing Emma Reading on guitar, again drawing on folk traditions from around the world for some fiery soundscapes on a collection of original, traditional and borrowed tunes.
A reworking of Cape Breton fiddler Jerry Holland’s Brenda Stubbert’s Reel ignites the torch paper, followed by Matt Heery’s The Bonfire with recorders firing off, clarinet answering back and drums clattering. The first traditional number is Café de Flore, a set of two French dance tunes that have a somewhat township feel, while the self-penned material makes its bow with the jazzy staccato rhythm Satsuma Moon, clarinet and recorder doing acrobats.
The longest cut at five and a held minutes is Mary Ashford, Jon Wilks (who recorded a version with Katherine Priddy) proving the melody to the traditional lyrics of a murder ballad relating the true story of the 1817 murder of a local woman (who narrates as her ghost) and the subsequent trail and acquittal of prime suspect Abraham Thornton who then challenged her brother to trial by battle when he launched an appeal, Ashford refusing to fight and Thornton emigrating to the America. Just 28 seconds shorter, introducing Eastern flavours,. The Man From Suburbia returns to instrumental form for an original dedicated to Churchill’s hometown of Surbiton, which is nowhere as exotic as the music makes it sound.
A brace of klezmers comes next with the lurching traditional Sha, Sha, Di Shviger Kymt followed by the livelier more ebullient Freilacher Nashele before a reworking of their own Bulgarian inspired Coffee Countdown from the debut, here served piped and unplugged. Veering between solemn and frenetic, exploding with self-confidence it’s a huge step forward and should easily earn them appearances at major festivals here and across Europe for a couple of years.
Former co-presenter of Brum Radio’s 50 Miles of Elbow Room, DAN HARTLAND follows up 2018’s Great Novels with new album Haywire due in November. Prior to that comes the single Cast A Coin in which the symbols found on maps become a metaphor for how to situate oneself in one’s own story and finds him working with The Brink, a local collective comprising Marko Miletic on upright and electric bass, and Becky Pickin and Andy Miles of synth pop outfit Grande Valise, bringing an electronic sheen to his contemporary folks-based songs.
Enjoying a new creative burst, MARC LEMON revisits his past for a refurbished version of Rollercoaster with new echoey acid pop vocals and pumped up production, opening with a sort of Hang On Sloopy drumbeat and swamped with twangy surf guitar.
OFFAL CLUB offer up another witty ditty with Blood Orange, a song about not deluding yourself about your pulling chances as you get older (“You think the young stuff’s giving you the eye/Well I think you must’ve had a few though/When you go kid yourself/That she would go and give herself to you”) that comes with a slight hint of the Lightning Seeds’ Pure.
With a hugely professional mock TOTP video on YouTube, OPEN ARMS (Ben Farmer, guitarist Sam Barratt, drummer Drew Peters) deliver a new dose of highly infectious indie pop in Other Side Of Life which, in tandem with Farmer’s glam androgynous look, suggests that TOTP video may one day be the real thing.
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