This month sees GERRY COLVIN release Past, Present & Crescent (Crocodile), a mix of, as the title says, old, new and songs from the 2022 Crescent Theatre show by The Gerry Colvin Band (Jerome Davies, Trish Power, Lyndon Webb and Marion Fleetwood) and The Gerry Colvin Big Folk Orchestra. It’s a new one that gets the ball rolling with Click Club Chair, a samba tinged la la la-ing refrain number about meeting wife to be Kathy at the legendary live venue run by Dave Travis, leading into the first recording of the melancholic circular guitar chiming The Forgotten Man, a song about a singer who’s faded from the spotlight which premiered in 2022 at the Kitchen Garden Café. Striking an associated note, another new one, with dobro, twangy guitar break, fiddle and mandolin, I’m A Songwriter Me is a wryly amusing number about the contemporary process, tackling writer’s block with a dash of plundering musical history for inspiration and looking for that elusive hook.
Kicking up the tempo, the accordion and fiddle-propelling five-minute A Folk Melody with its musically tumbling narrative of the genre’s journey is another brand new song as is the breezy shuffling, jazz-tinged Inconsiderate Man with an acoustic solo from Lyndon and typically sharp Colvin lyrics about self-protecting misanthropy. The final new number, set to a slight marching beat with mandolin trills and cornet, while the word title pun rather stretches grammatical accuracy, War Feats is a clever metaphorical anti-war protest number about a soldier who loses five toes – and comrades - in battle.
One of the oldest songs, dating from the Colvin Quarmby CQV album, the jaunty countrified social commentary Crumbling Country Stand, about the ordinary working man upon whom the foundations are built, gets a new treatment with the band line but retaining mentions of Ikea, Sky Sports, Colonel Gaddaffi and Tony Blair while the final three are all culled from the Crescent Theatre spectacular. Originally featured on Jazz Tales Of Country Folk, the bitter post-break-up I Killed A Flower For You Today gets a rework with the sparse, moody piano and upright bass-anchored arrangement now featuring brass and rounded out with a soulful closing vocal from Jackie Walters (formerly Jackie Clarke of Asia Blue). Finally, there’s the fingerpicked acoustic love song delicacy of The Ocean and the eight minute plus closing audience-participation rousing ebb and flow rhythmed Leave A Light In The Window with its brass and strings and big gospel vocals finale with Walters, Jane Pearl and Jennie Williams. This year marking the 30th anniversary of founding ColvinQuarmby and his first recordings after the demise of Terry & Gerry, while he may be winding down the number of live shows, it’s clear his consummate genius as writer and vocalist remain undiminished, with the intriguingly titled Festina Lente Lives likely on the cards this summer.
Of Black Country roots and now ensconced in Shropshire, Mick Butler aka SICKY continues to bang out albums that would, in another universe, be staples of the indie charts and feature regularly on mainstream rock shows. His latest is Trouble In Mind, a collection of a dozen tracks that opens with the keyboard hum of Billy Cousins before turning into a swaggering drums driven marching rhythm and distorted vocals that, an ironic track about escapism, an imaginary superhero you can pretend to be when you find yourself doubting everything, suggests what Roger Waters might have sounded like had he got into glam.
Indeed, glam is a prevailing influence here, most notably drinking deep from the T. Rex well on several numbers, first being the Blur meets Bolan seduction song whimsy of I’m Happy If You’re Happy, his two young daughters on noises and one of three with Jen Bone on double bass, with its line “if you’re happy I am James Dean” and continuing through such foot tapping, infectious nuggets as Ten Minutes with Bridgnorth’s
St.Leonard’s church bells and a 20th Century Boy rockabilly urgency, the bass licks Bolan boogie of the abandonment-themed My Girl’s Gone with its sample from Quatermass And The Pit, the cautionary waring of destructive habits that is Slide and the rumbling slider shuffle of Money For The News, a critique of modern media if you hadn’t guessed that features the sliding doors of a Stourbridge shopping centre
There’s nothing here over three minutes and, following the stuttering slow chug and crooning harmonies of Life In A Jar, the next three are all under two, but it’s the quality not the width that counts on the slow, bluesy Songbird, The Hill (apparently inspired by a punishing charity walk) and the human frailty, lounge organ backed Bowie-cabaret of Mankind with niece Rebecca Butler on vocals. Calling a halt with the breathily sung and longer Just Me with an intro and chorus that sounds like Bolan taking on a Dimitri Tiomkin Western score and has a spoken passage towards the abrupt close.
Filtering the sparkle of 70s pop with the sour of 21st century life, this is his best yet.
