MIKE DAVIES COLUMN DECEMBER 2023

Titled after a quote from Robert Burns used to describe the poverty he saw and recorded live on an iPhone, GARY O’DEA releases five minute new single Down on The Elbows  Of Existence with strummed 60s folk protest DNA, Dylan influences included, with its encouragement to “Get the kettle on the boil, wipe that frown off with a smile…darn your jeans, darn your luck and darn the rest to hell and back”. (https://garyodea-gojomusic.bandcamp.com/track/down-on-the-elbows-of-existence)

MARC LEMON digitally sees the year out with the infectious earworm jangly 60s psychedelia folksy pop My Eccentric Cousin (think The Kinks meet early Robyn Hitchcock by way of The Velvet Underground and perhaps, as James Lowe of The Electric Prunes once observed, Brian Wilson), written about his father’ second cousin Douglas, an English gent of the old school who smoke untipped fags, wore a tweed jacket and grey flannels  and whose esoteric book collection included the Bhagvad Gita, who shared a bachelor pad with his fellow retired architect pipe-smoking brother Kerris until the latter died peacefully in his chair. A tribute to a vanished breed of non-conformist English eccentrics who upheld values that have long fallen into neglect and one of the best things he’s recorded. (https://marclemon.com/)

 

Just putting the word out to flag up attention for CATCH THE RAIN, a Stourbridge close harmony quartet comprising music teacher Julia Disney (Vocals, Keyboard, Guitar, Violin), creative psychotherapist Odilia Mabrouk (Vocals, Violin, Guitar), visual artist Lisa Westwood (Vocals, Cajon, Djembe, Percussion, Kazoo) and gardener Jon Hazlewood (Electric Bass, Guitar). Formed last year they have a folksy base but the music also embraces  dreamy Laurel Canyon pop, classical touches, Eastern European shades and a wide spectrum of influences that variously encompass Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush, Jonny Flynn, Suzanne Vega, Glenn Miller, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Sinead O'Connor and Stevie Wonder. An EP is on the cards for sometime early 2024 but meanwhile they’ve released Tapestry, a five and half minute fiddle and piano driven waltzing Weimar cabaret and Balkan cocktail  with fairytale lyrics about the heart’s fateful tapestry. Potentially the most exciting new local name since The Lost Notes (https://www.facebook.com/CatchTheRainBand)

Their first new music since 2016 and a taster for next year’s new album, the URBAN FOLK QUARTET, comprising   Galician fiddle player Paloma Trigás, fiddle player/guitarist Joe Broughton, singer/banjo player Dan Walsh and percussionist Tom Chapman, have released a cover of long time set staple Peter Gabriel’s Solsbury Hill (SAE Records), a   splendid  mountain music take with gentle percussion, strings and clawhammer banjo it’s also graced with a guest bass appearance from Fairport’s Dave Pegg.  The forthcoming album, True Story, will also feature  a guest contribution from Chris and Kellie While. (www.theufq.com) 

Theological agitator  and singer-songwriter, DAVID BENJAMIN BOWER takes time off from his Messianic Folklore podcast to release Kindness is Solid Stone Violence is a Heavy Loan to Pay (https://benjaminblower.bandcamp.com/album/kindness-is-solid-stone-violence-is-a-heavy-loan-to-pay) which might be best musically described as a cross between Beans On Toast and Hurt era Johnny Cash, a heady brew of philosophy, existentialism, benediction and protest.

Voice soaring on the refrain and guitar – and possibly mandolin - strummed, it kicks off with Finger In The Wind which has mountain music folk hints and prophetic end of days lyrics (“See the valleys lifted up/Rise, scum of the earth/See the mountains crashing down…All y'are as flowers and grass/Nations as handfuls of dust/All your princes brought to nought”). A steady marching drum beat and piano underpin the title track with its vision of a world of equality (“The way is like the rain that falls/And waters all regardless/The way is like the sun that rises/Upon enemies and others”) and that “there may come a day/And may the day be real/When the gentle shall raise their hands/And the proud will kneel”, the latter part of the title referring to the consequences of our actions (“someone pays for everything I break”).

Fingerpicked and punctuated by distant piano notes, Now We Gaze Into A Mirror again has dusty American hymnal folk notes to a simple lyric about an uncertain future  (“we gaze into a mirror dimly/Toward the unknown lands of knowing”) before a tribal drum thump rhythm and intermittent clanging percussion carries the compelling hypnotic  six-minute No Debts. No Masters. No Law. No Caesars, the title pretty much comprising the entirety of the lyrics along with the repeated refrain “Love fulfils it all/Love will be all in all” where thoughts of Iron & Wine, Mark Kozalek or  Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy might not go amiss.

Another simple folky, sparsely picked guitar number, The Rain Not the Thunder serves up a metaphor about how a whisper can be more effective than a scream as he sings “it’s the rain, not the thunder/That makes the flowers bloom” with its call to “join hands in the ring” suggesting ancient rituals. Opening a capella before guitar and dobro arrive  and the rhythm picks up, Gather Round The Table O My Enemies is a particularly striking number that sounds like some old time Appalachian preacher’s gospel (“I’ll pray for you all/As my cheeks run with oil/And make offerings by fire for your souls/I’ll pray that we all/May rest by quiet waters/In the goodness and the mercy of the age”) with its prayer “O god of our gladness/O god of our madness and our grief/Care for our bodies/O god of our enemies/O god of our wandering feet”. 

That same quality extends to the cracked vocals of  Empty Thyselves  that returns to the theme of  humility, love and equality (“Think not thyself to be more than thou art/And judge thyself with courageous heart/Greet ye everyone with honour/And love ye, always, love one another”),  the only track to have a specific religious note (“in God’s love may your minds be remade/And empty thyself as an offering”) in its Desiderata-styled prescription for a good life (“Rejoice with those who now rejoice/And weep with those who speak with broken voice/So far as you may be at peace with all/Stand alongside those of no report…Never avenge offence for offence/Pay back your enemies with love, my friends/May your prayers resound in all that you do/Welcome saint and welcome strangers too/May your prayers be wound of many a threat/And evil overcome with good”).

 Just over 80 seconds with again just minimal acoustic guitar backing, Meet Me Where I Sing And Stamp My Feet heads to the end with its call for shared communion, troubles and jubilation (“Meet me in the temple of my heart…Meet me in the sorrows of the night/Meet me in the troubles of my days/Walk with me through the times of wilderness and pain/Meet me where my prayers arise again… Let us be in love and cry and sing and laugh until the dawn/Meet me in the tavern of my dreams”).

The lyrics  again pretty much comprising of just the staccato title, it ends with the pulsing percussive drone and reverberating deep plangent piano notes of the almost ethereal Covers. Believes. Holds. Stays., a final hillside chapel-like hymnal blessing of an all-encompassing peace and assurance.  It might not reach the wide audience it deserves, but this is one of the finest old school Americana folk albums of the year. 

MIKE DAVIES COLUMN NOVEMBER 2023

 

I don’t know what COLIN HALL takes before he goes to bed, but his latest single, The Moon & Mr Jones, was the result of dreaming about meeting David Bowie on the moon. Appropriately then, with its swayalong rhythms and cosmic keyboard frills, it has   definite spacey Bowie

flavours, not to mention being another example of the wide range of his musical inclinations. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=32X036QCeGI)

The first of what will form an eventual EP, THE LOST NOTES release their first track featuring new bassist Steve Vantsis (whose CV includes Fish, Candy Dulfer and KT Tunstall), indicating a new country sound with Don’t Try It On Me, a dusty, slow bruised heart swayer (“You can play the angel in my bed, try to put the devil in my head”) with Ben on lead and Lucy and Olly on close harmonies that could have been born in Austin and instantly claims a spot as, not just a diamond in their already vast treasure trove, but one of the best things you’ll hear this year. 

Due for release next February, now signed to Cooking Vinyl, The Pendulum Swing is the much anticipated second album from KATHERINE PRIDDY, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed and hugely successful The Eternal Rocks Beneath. It’s trailed by First House On The Left, from whence the album title comes, intimately, whisperingly sung with Nick Drake-like pastoral guitar and string caresses, inspired by the terraced cottage where she grew up and all the memories it holds of all who ever lived there. Speaking of the track, she says “I wanted this song and the album to feel lived in, and this is captured in part by the ghostly atmospheres, mechanical clockwork sounds, creaking floorboards, indistinct whispers and old tape recordings of my family that are littered throughout. I want to invite the listener to come in, sit down and inhabit the album for a little while, and this song is right at the heart of that”. Ineffably, dreamily  gorgeous  it suggests that difficult second album is going to be a walk in the park.

"Overall, I wanted this song and the album to feel lived in, and this is captured in part by the ghostly atmospheres, mechanical clockwork sounds, creaking floorboards, indistinct whispers and old tape recordings of my family that are littered throughout. I want to invite the listener to come in, sit down and inhabit the album for a little while, and this song is right at the heart of that.”