SOUL SURMISE

THE SWELL SEASON - STRICT JOY

Things have all changed for Glen Hansard. It is almost two decades since I purchased The Frames first 7” single The Dancer and I have watched ever since as record companies dumped them and they hung on for dear life before scrambling to the top of Ireland’s music mountain. Then Hansard accidently teamed up with a young Czech girl named Marketa Irglova, recorded a few songs that made up a record, and then by a freak of circumstances found themselves centre of an against all odds cinema hit that hurled them into the arms of America, bringing phenomenal success and even an Oscar. On that amazing Oscar night, which Hansard has likened to scoring the winning goal for Ireland in the World Cup Final (and we all cheered equally delighted!), Bono sent him a message, “From Busker to Oscar” and summed up that career I have been watching so carefully. There is a three disc deluxe version of this new album that helps reveal the Hansard we have all got to know and love. There are some lovely moments both in the live songs and in the snippets in between where Glen and Mar talk about their art.

Hansard has talked about mapping his life in songs and in one of those songs he shouted about “I want my life to make more sense/I want my life to make amends/ I want my life to make more sense to me.” Strict Joy is all about those things. In the vortex of their accidental career, Glen and Mar fell accidently in love and have since fallen out of love and decided, it seems, to write an album about the disappointment of love breaking down. Fleetwood Mac they are not and Rumours this is not but it does live in that very strange terrain where Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham fuelled art together by weaving art together while their hearts were breaking apart. The album title is taken from a poem by James Stephens:

“For as he meditated misery

And cared it into song – Strict Care, Strict Joy

Caring for grief, he cared his grief away

And those sad songs, tho’ woe be all the theme

Do not make us grieve who read them now –

Because the poet makes grief beautiful.”

 

The album that takes this poem’s title fulfils the vocation of the lamenting love song. As Glen and Mar make the grief of their broken relationship beautiful you see the spiritual purpose of sad songs; the ability of songs to bring healing. We might even see in the documentary companion the proof of the pudding. These songs that they work on together might be the reason that Glen and Mar seem to be able to hold on to a tender, loving friendship.

 

In These Arms declares that one of our reasons for existence is to love – “Maybe I was born to hold you in these arms.” The next song The Rain however reminds us that all our dreams are limited by our failings – “OK I’m not what I promised you I’d become” -  and that in the end as Mar puts it so vulnerably, honestly and plainly on I Have Loved You Wrong – “Forgive me lover/For I have sinned/And I have loved you wrong.” It is almost a liturgical confessional and brings us back to these love songs being part of something more than frivolous, fleeting romances. This is love that is part of a much bigger plot which Glen perhaps points out when he sings “I’m feeling so small/Against a big sky tonight.”

 

Musically Strict Joy is layered, crafted without ever being shiny or sheen. Hansard’s gift is melody that is immediately enticing but gradually reveals so that you are in from the start but benefit from repeated listens.  This album is much more Glen than Mar which suggests that The Frames and Swell Season are two differing settings for the one songwriter. Where Hansard’s fascinating story goes next will be as interesting as his past. Can he and Mar continue on a human or artistic level will be fascinating? Will his next album be with The Frames? Will the Once star keep rising or fall back to earth? Whatever, anyone who has followed until now has learned to enjoy the moment Hansard is in. Strict Joy is another great moment; as my lovely friend Karin sings, “What a beautiful piece of heartache...”

MUMFORD & SONS - SIGH NO MORE

My goodness, I am still trying to come to terms with this record. On first listen I wondered had I just fallen in with the NEXT BIG REVELATION! I had heard about these guys for some time and was frustrated that the album took so long. Then they did a gig here in Belfast and I got a significant amount of raving text messages. On first listen I started asking people was I bonkers or was this the next big thing? No one has disagreed and indeed many have said, “Even better than you think!” I heard the rustic bounce of what’s current, the deftly poetic writing of Dylan and the theological depth of U2. To seek their contemporaries it is America’s Fleet Foxes and England’s Noah and The Whale meeting on the island between them; there are hints of Irish folk and tinges of Glen Hansard’s The Frames.

 

The songwriting is quality and the lyrics are subtle and profound carriers of theological truth. The overall theme seems to be about making sense between humanity and God. The first lines of the album are “Serve God love me and men/
This is not the end/Lived unbruised we are friends/And I’m sorry.” There is a confessing of mankind’s weakness as in “man is a giddy thing” but a hopefulness that there is a love that can set the human being free, “Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you/It will set you free/Be more like the man you were made to be.” These last lines might be a prophetic provocation to the anti Jesus, more  Pharisee-like version of love that has masqueraded with demonic effect in many a Christian Church. Mumford and Sons declare that the authentic love of God will be found where freedom results! And we are not even out of the first song, Sigh No More, yet!

 

Roll Away The Stone gives the album its anchoring doctrinal belief, “It seems that all my bridges have been burned/But you say 'That's exactly how this grace thing works/It's not the long walk home that will change this heart/But the welcome I receive with every start.” These lines made me literally jump on first listen. This is as succinct and poetic a theological pop song verse as Bono has ever tried to write. The rest of the album has lashings of love and hope without ever losing site of our human frailties. The ultimate aim is to find out what the Maker made us to be. We already saw that in Sigh No More. Here it is again in The Cave, “Cause I need freedom now/And I need to know how/To live my life as it's meant to be.” That keeps pointing back to the Maker whom we were made for (Awake My Soul) and whom we’ll find dependence in (The Cave).

 

It’s a soul stimulating beauty of a record and they tell me they are even better live. Are they the next big thing? Who knows but what a debut!

THE ROD STEWART SESSIONS 1971-1998

I am old enough to remember when Rod Stewart was the coolest rock star in the UK. With The Faces and when they were merely playing as his solo band he and Ron Wood, now a Rolling Stone, would prance around the Top of the Pops’ studio all jack the lad, down to earth and what a voice. Hit singles like Maggie May and You Wear It Well and The Faces’ Cindy Incidentally were the solid songs in a Glam Rock pop chart that is only remembered fondly for sentimental, rather than artistic reasons. By the late seventies however D’Ya Think I’m Sexy had tarnished Stewart’s artist with Hollywood glitz, glamour and gold diggin’. The eighties struggled too but his record from the obligatory unplugged phenomenon of the early nineties reminded us of the talent and now he is an elderly keeper of the old songs, his voice a perfect vehicle for the classics both rock n roll and crooner.

Sessions 1971-1998 is a marvellous monument to a Stewart’s talent. Indeed it reminds you that even in those dodgy years he still had a voice and a knack to either write or choose a good song. At 30 quid for the box, or 16 quid to download, it is a veritable bargain for 63 songs. And even if there are some songs that you don’t need to hear twice there are many interesting artefacts, rare tracks, unreleased songs and alternative versions that will help you to rediscover Rod and remind you of his place in the history of British rock music. There are too many to name but early versions of his early tracks like Maggie May are an interesting insight to the development of songs; the acoustic versions of You’re in My Heart and the b side Rosie are lovely; his piano versions of Chris Rea’s Windy Town and John Lennon’s In My Life are stunning; and unreleased covers like Frankie Miller’s When I’m Away from You, The Call’s Let the Day Begin, Bob Dylan’s This Wheel’s On Fire and Elvis Costello’s The Long Journey Home are well worth the listen.

Over the past summer I got round to reading a Rod Stewart biography for the first time. It was a fascinating experience. Having read many rock biographies of some depth, due to my interest in theo-musicology, I was taken by how songs were given a couple of sentences and girl friends were given entire chapters! It was a sign of the lack of depth that writers judged Stewart’s work. Not that there isn’t depth. His song cycle The Killing Of Georgie Pts 1 & 2, finished on this collection with the previously unreleased Part 3, was maybe one of the first songs about the gay issue in mainstream pop and yet it didn’t even warrant a contextual perspective.

On Sessions... the interesting content is probably more likely to come in his choice of covers. The aforementioned Let The Day Begin was a massive hit for The Call in 1989 and it’s prayerful heart, “Here’s to you my little loves, with blessings from above, let the day begin,” is far from the only prayer here, joined by John Martyn’s May You Never and a piano version of Stewart’s re-write of Dylan on Forever Young. Dylan’s Day Off is also a prayer to the Blessed One and has to be one of the few uses of the liturgical word intercession in a pop song but sadly loses its transcendence in perhaps the worst lines ever recorded, “Play to the whistle/You really make me bristle...” Oh dear! Dylan’s Groom Still Waiting At The Altar is the most theological of the songs here and another intriguing choice of cover. Rod has been doing Dylan ever since he could sing but this one is from Dylan’s Christian trilogy, if originally only a b-side, before being added to Shot Of Love later on. The theology of “But I know God has mercy on them who are slandered and humiliated” certainly outstrips, “You got legs right up to your neck/You’re making me a physical wreck” from Hot Legs!

All in all, a wonderful box of sessions with way more treasure than junk; good Christmas present!

YOKO ONO - BETWEEN MY HEAD AND THE SKY

I was always told that you should give credit where it is due. Yoko Ono has never experienced that truth. She has always been seen in the light (or dark) of her relationship with John Lennon. It is an unfair context. Yoko was a real artist long before she met her Beatle John and has been making records now for 30 years after his tragic death. Those who laugh her off as some whacky Japanese screamer are not without an argument but they are not seeing the whole picture either. Yes, you need to acquire the taste of her screechy accented high pitched vocal, and sometimes you don’t even acquire an entire affinity, but you ignore this woman’s work to your detriment. Yoko Ono was making music with the likes of John Cage and Ornette Coleman before Lennon had even sniffed a record deal and was married to two musicians before she met her Beatle. Her songs on her collaboration with Lennon, Double Fantasy, released just before that dreadful New York night in December 1980, were so much more edgy and contemporary than her more accepted husband’s; Kiss Kiss Kiss had a real late seventies CBGBs punk feel and Beautiful Boys was a touching ballad with more mood and sophistication than Lennon’s more traditional songwriting on that particular record. Yoko Ono is a poet, artist and musician of a very high quality and intrigue.

Between My Head and The Sky is yet another remarkable piece of art considering it comes from a 76 year old woman. Yes, Leonard Cohen is rejuvenated at a mere 74 but Ono out strips even Cohen with her ability to stay fresh and contemporary. She can be found here mixing indie guitar rock as in the opener Waiting For The D Train, to electro in songs like The Sun Is Down and jazz as in Memory of Footsteps. Her native New York is a place hiving with avant-garde performance art and the fusion of all kinds of art forms. This is another work of a poet, performance artist and eccentric musician but it might also be one of her most accessible records. The ambience is beautiful and atmospheric and the spoken word is at times poignant, provocative and always poetic. There are a few uses of her scream as an extra instrument but these are restrained. There is no doubt that Ono has an advantage in having her son as a band member and producer but it is also a mark of her credentials as an artist that keeps her imagination fertile.

And of course imagining has been a word synonymous with the Lennons since John took an idea from Yoko’s book Grapefruit and added a thought from some Christian Prayer Book they were given, to write his most famous solo song Imagine. On this record Ono is still imagining peace, seeking actions and love of brother and sisterhood. Her continual message has been a love for Creation and a love for the world. Her art is her way to contribute to the healing of both and you always feel she is on to something. She probably needs another thing to make her something happen but she is still on to something. Fair dues!

MCINTOSH ROSS - THE GREAT LAKES

 

Take the crafted songs of his last album Pale Rider, perhaps his strongest songwriting collection since Deacon Blue’s debut Raintown, and add that band’s backing vocalist, his wife Lorraine McIntosh, plus an array of top American session men with Americana bent and what you get is so unique to the Ricky Ross catalogue that it demands the new moniker McIntosh Ross. The Great Lakes is like nothing Ross has done before. Very importantly Ms McIntosh is not just a backing vocalist. She contributes to the songwriting and takes duets and lead vocals too. She has played Emmylou Harris to Ross’s Gram Parsons for over twenty years but the collaborative nature of this record along with the pedal steel Americana feel is a perfect tweak to their template.

Ross is a craftsman who though writing in a professional song factory way always seems to be in the muse as well. His images are clever, the songs seemingly simple in chord and lyric but a closer look and the depth speaks to the human soul. Bluebell Wood with McIntosh on lead is the folkiest that things get and reminds the Deacon Blue collectors of their live version of Mountain Thyme. Walls is an absolutely stunning song, acoustic guitar and vulnerable Ross voice finding life in all its fullness no matter what that life throws. Mount Juliet does for postal workers what Dignity did for refuse collectors. Jesus Nailed My Sins Upon A Tree is a cappella gospel and gives a few clues to the fact that this is a deeply spiritually album; Passing Place and The World Is Not My Home among others hinting to more beyond this life.

The very first Deacon Blue single release was the brilliant Dignity and on that song Ross declared from a faraway place “I’m thinking about work... I’m thinking about faith... I’m thinking about home...” He has been a chronicler of these three things ever since but perhaps has never woven the three threads together as well as has here. These are songs where, though the weather turns stormy, it gets dark and there are walls closing in, there is hope and dogged but joyous belief in a power that is beyond yet mingling in the midst. These are songs about how the eternal gives meaning to the momentary and how through that connection we find an abundance of life to celebrate in songs.

CHEAP TRICK - SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND

Cheap Trick are perhaps the one band who have the credentials to cover The Beatles. Building a post punk guitar rock sound around the foundation of The Beatles’ melodies they didn’t do the copycat plod of Oasis but made the influence their own. They have not only been engineered by The Beatles’ engineer Geoff Emerick and produced by fifth Beatle George Martin but actually were John Lennon’s band on I’m Losing You, though their version was left off Double Fantasy and only released later as an outtake on the John Lennon Anthology. They have also released versions of Day Tripper and Magical Mystery Tour.

No, it is not better than the original but it is a great live encounter with what has arguably been declared the best rock album of all time. Basically Cheap Trick with the New York Philharmonic and a little help from friends Joan Osborne, Ian Ball (from Gomez) and the Indian Sitar Band do what The Beatles never did and perform the album psychedelic cover to cover. So successful has it been that they have since finished a residency in Las Vegas performing it. Cheap Trick are great players and everything is played with a flourish; check in particular Nielsen’s guitar on Fixing a Hole and Peterson’s bass on Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds. There is something about the removal of the songs from the arty seriousness of the defining album of rock and into a Cheap Trick world of madness that allows songs about imaginary bands, circuses, traffic wardens and children’s drawings to relax and become real fun. This is done without losing the poignancy of She’s Leaving Home where the Philharmonic strings tug at your heart, the spiritual yearning of Within You Without You where the Indian Sitar Band tug at your soul and the stripped back but building to a crescendo sophistication of A Day in the Life tugs at your mind.

Totally enjoyable; the ultimate Beatles’ tribute band!

PREFAB SPROUT - LET'S CHANGE THE WORLD WITH MUSIC

It is coming on twenty years since Prefab Sprout were the critics darlings and hitting the charts a few times a year. When I mention their latest album to my students, even the older musical literate ones, no one has heard of them. What a shame. There has never been a more intelligent, well crafted, never mind emotionally and behaviourally accurate break up song than When Love Breaks Down; it should be given to every male when they turn sixteen. To achieve such psychological thesis in a top ten banker of a tune is very rare. Then there was Cars and Girls, a Bruce Springsteen critique that again was too smart to be so radio friendly but Prefab Spout made it work. The spiritual depth of One Of the Broken, that opened up exegesis on David and the Psalms, was another major achievement in lifting pop into the highest realms of art.

Yet, it has been twenty years, and actually this new album was written and demoed in 1993 but lands nine years into another century with the same lush beauty and pop hue that gave, the now reclusive and hardly able to hear and sing, Paddy McAloon the music magazine superlative of genius. Effortlessly catchy, cleverly written and stunningly crafted, Let’s Change the World With Music is what I have been attempting to write a book about for a good few years. That McAloon believes that music has power is not a surprise. Where I sat up and really started to listen was when I realised that he adds another vital contribution to the mix; God. For McAloon, music is a gift of God for the transformation of individuals and society. I wish it had been released before I did my dissertation on the same theory!

God is everywhere on Lets Change The World With Music. For McAloon the voice of God in our fallen world comes through music. His take on Genesis and the genesis of this album finds God speaking:

“Let there be music,

music will be...

and you shall hear my story,

you will glimpse my glory

and find a refuge

from the trouble that you see.”

 

Throughout the piece you’ll hear angels sing and sweet Gospel music will carry the heavy hearts, ignite the romance of love and the fire the acts of constructive change. On Ride people “walking in the footsteps of the Lord” know Jesus by their side. On Earth: The Story So Far the birth of Jesus comes with a message of salvation and love. God Watch Over You even suggests incredulously that McAloon is not a believer but is wearing out his knees praying for his children.

 

It is a remarkable piece of spiritual art coming from somewhere it might not be expected, though I guess those who loved the aforementioned One Of The Broken were warned of an interest. Whether the album is contemporary enough to have my students rediscover great albums like Steve McQueen and Jordan: The Comeback is not certain but as an album about music and faith it is a rich treasure trove for us theo-musicologists!

SUSAN ENAN - PLAINSONG

Worth the wait! It is ten years since Susan Enan approached me at someone else’s gig in Belfast and asked if I’d listen to her tape and see if I’d like to book her for  the Greenbelt Festival. I went home as nervous as I always am about tapes that 99% of the time were awful and was pleasantly surprised. I was even more surprised, but concluded she might be the real deal, when she turned down my offer to play the Greenbelt that was coming up; she had the next year in mind when she’d got it just right. That strategy, patience and precision has come to beautiful fruition on this debut album after the work-in-progress eps down through the decade. For those who have followed her career, all the crafted songs are here, but more fully formed which does not mean more produced or arranged. Enan uses spaces between chords like Denison Witmer and has the same literary spirituality as Over the Rhine. Arrangements are careful and the understated strings here, piano there brings the sonic punch. Some might be aware of Beyond The Wonder from it featuring on the TV show Bones and subsequent album but here it shimmers beyond the wonder! Moonlight is classically romantic and Skin, Bone and Silicone sad and deeply tender. When it comes to overall impact you are back to the word understated again. With songs like Don’t Worry, On Your Side and If You’re Feeling Low, there is a vast amount of hope, love, forgiveness along with help, recovery and redemption; like she left the spaces for God to fill. Run the bath, light the candles and allow it these songs to gently sweep over you to soothe body, mind, heart and soul.

ATHLETE - BLACK SWAN

The first time I saw Athlete live (being there to see the support Iain Archer) I was taken aback by the beauty of those moments when the whole band swept in with a melodic swoosh. It happens more than a few times in the Athlete style of writing and every time it hit my heart with a warmth and I had that deep down wonderful feeling that you get when your soul smiles. The swoop and crescendo in their music that causes the soul smiles has had them pigeon holed with Snow Patrol and Coldplay for the longest time and there is no doubt that they are comrades in sound with both those major players. The downside of that is that for some reason the British rock press have taken and irrational lazy dislike of said bands.

I find it infantile and less than intelligent when I hear these bands being called bland and sometimes in the same sentence that Oasis are being recognised as crucial. The Gallagher’s might support Man. City but let us not kid ourselves, when they put two fingers up, at whoever, we should be glad they can count to two and their cheap-pack retreading of Beatles’ riffs, melodies and song titles ran out of intrigue a good decade ago. That neither Gallagher thinks music can change much apart from their bank balances and their opportunity for wild hedonism leaves me preferring to waste little time on such empty pap.

Athlete are a band of deeper motivation and their songs seem to be almost too grounded, sometimes in the mud of life’s weary struggles of family and culture but somehow they always find a refrain that reaches into blue hopeful skies. The title track of Black Swan is a case in point. The dark chime of its guitar riff declares a sadness of mortality’s end result before the hope kicks in:

“Though many battles I have won

I lost too many friends I could count on

And I know theyʼll be the first to welcome me

When I parachute into eternity.”

Belief in spite of the evidence of the real world could be a way to describe the Athlete mission statement. It is never creedal but it is always spiritually bright. Love Come Rescue and The Unknown prove the point. The former with its stripped down guitar arrangement reveals a new intimacy to Athlete’s craft. The latter perhaps indicates that The Killers could be another bunch of companions, not only in sound but particularly in spiritual intention. It is an invitation and encouragement to seek for the mystery in all its brilliance and all its shocks and surprises, knowing that whatever happens...

“Lift your head up

Untie the knot

My little sunshine

Hope is never light-years away.”

This is the strongest set of tunes that Athlete have yet released and my advice is that the deluxe edition is a must buy for the acoustic piano version of the title track and the lovely, original of The Unknown, Ordinary Angel. The full eighteen tracks of this longer version reveals a band with a variety of shades and shapes, who have just released as good an album as any British band will release this year and way, way beyond the feeble ambition of recent Oasis releases!

Full of soul smiles!

YIM YAMES - Tribute To...

 

This is a fascinating and most satisfying little EP release from Jim James (Yim Yames) the main man in My Morning Jacket and currently working with Conor Oberst and M. Ward in the super-group Monsters Of Folk (album out September). In that busy schedule he has found time to record six songs from George Harrison most prolific period – 1966-1970 – all stripped of their Beatle-esque and Phil Spector arrangements and slowed down to a snail’s pace; what a lovely sounding snail though! I have said many times on this blog and in my book The Rock Cries Out that Harrison didn’t find his spiritual answers in the same way that I did but The Protestant Reformers, in whom my inheritance lies, always encouraged light from all quarters and something in these songs particularly My Sweet Lord (I’d love a Christian version that uses Biblical names for God in place of Harrison’s eastern deities – come on Sufjan, I dare you!), All Things Must Pass and Beware of Darkness whispers something positive to my soul. His versions of Long, Long, Long and Love You To lift them out of the Lennon-McCartney dense White Album and Revolver respectively to show the quiet Beatle’s quiet gems. In this new invention, that could have been recorded deep in the woods in Bon Ivor’s cabin, these songs ooze the mystical sense of Harrison’s intent; searching, prayerful, spiritually careful.

Lazily soulful.