SOUL SURMISE

THE KILLERS - MY SOUL'S OWN WARNING - Soul Surmise Song

I love it when songs kick some spiritual surmising into my day. I love to share them. Here's a new one by The Killers...

 

"If you could see through the banner of the sun

Into eternity's eyes

Like a vision reaching down to you

Would you turn away?

What if it knew you by your name?

What kind of words would cut

Through the clutter of the whirlwind of these days?"

 

The Killers have been teasing us for a while, streaming singles off a new record, Imploding The Mirage, that still doesn’t seem to have a release date.

A song called My Soul’s Own Warning was bound to catch my attention. They lyricist and frontman Brandon Flowers has never been short of some spiritual surmising. and then this verse had me really meditating on spiritual things. This one has us looking into eternity, finding a vision from what can only be understood as heaven. 

The thrill for any human being of being known by name. To be seen, recognised, taken seriously is something that is becoming more and more realised as being vital for a human being’s mental, emotional and spiritual health. That lyric had me off to Isaiah 43 where God tells us that we are “precious and in honoured in my sight” and “I have summoned you by name.” Flowers’ lyrics ask if we would turn such attention down.

He then goes on to ask if such a vision and such knowledge might cut through “the clutter of the whirlwind of these days”. Maybe Coronavirus has exposed the clutter but it certainly tossed up the whirlwind.

My Own Soul’s Warning is the stuff of spiritual surmising. Now what about the rest of the record? 

RORY BUTLER - WINDOW SHOPPING

Listening to Rory Butler’s debut album Window Shopping, I couldn’t help but think that he has been influenced by his influencers influencers.

Let me explain. When Rory Butler was about 3 or 4 I spent a little time in his house. I was amateurishly managing Iain Archer at the time and had convinced Rory’s dad Steve and music business partners that they needed to release Iain’s first album. They had a house in Dalry, Ayrshire with a studio in the basement.

Sticky Music eventually released two Iain Archer records, Playing Dead and Crazy Bird. As those were recorded Rory took a shine to “Archie” as he called him. It is a relationship that continued. I watched as a twelve year old Rory played live with Iain at the Greenbelt Festival.

Butler’s debut album has many of the hallmarks of those two Archer records particularly the more acoustic Crazy Bird. Butler has the same guitar playing fretboard dancing style as Archer. It is mesmerising and thankfully disciplined enough to not clutter up the songs.

I did say though that Butler was more influenced by Archer’s influencers. I remember first meeting Iain Archer and being captivated by his versions of John Martyn’s Over the Hill and May You Never. He actually released the latter as an extra track on his first Sticky Music single Wishing. We eventually got Archer on a John Martyn tour.

Rory Butler’s voice has that laid back languishing vocal style of John Martyn and of course he is also Scottish. Though I liken it to Martyn to leave it there would be an injustice. It is Butler’s very own voice and it draws you in with a warmth, an intimacy and that accent adds authenticity.

The other influence of an influence is his dad’s love of Jackson Browne. Rory’s dad Steve fronted early 90s band Lies Damned Lies that had a brief spell signed to Siren Records back in the day. They continued to make albums of utter tastefulness in that studio that Rory toddled about in. 

Steve Butler made a few solo records too and Jackson Browne can very much be heard in their DNA. Where Rory is channeling his dad’s Jackson influence is in the content of the songs. Rory doesn’t sing so much Browne’s introspection as his social critique of his times. 

Window Shopping is to the generations 20-somethings what The Pretender was for that age group the mid 70s. The title track does seems autobiographical. Introducing it a while back at a SoFar gig Rory spoke about moving from Edinburgh to London to become a musician and ending up a Vegan Barista, working in a cafe “underpaid and over qualified.” It is personal but no Late For The Sky.

A quick study of Cameron Watt’s evocative album cover reveals that the influence of smart phones and screen time is very much on Butler’s mind. Mind Your Business is about “living on line… every single second on it”. He’s questioning a world that “makes you feel good when you’re on display.”

On the other side of the story Butler realises that social media has been the source of wake up calls for social justice across the world. This Side Of the World was inspired by the the photo of that Syrian child refugee washed up on a Mediterranean beach. That we cannot get “in” to the world that so much of our world lives through. Powerful song.

Tell Yourself is the antithesis of screen addiction and social media. A song about friendship being the best source of residence and self worth. 

This record is a refreshing piece of work. Reviews are labelling it folk. I can see why with the finger picking acoustic foundation and Martyn-esque flair but that would be a lazy pigeon hole for an album of contemporary reporting with a contemporary vitality and urgency. It is so much deeper than Ed, George or Sam. It is so good.

LIGHT FROM ROCK MUSIC VOL 3 - U2; DON'T LET IT GO OUT

This Sunday night sees the airing of the third in our new series  Light From Rock Music on Fitzroy TV. After episodes looking for Light in the songs of Van Morrison and Bob Dylan we are turning our attentions to U2.

Now, I wrote a book about U2. That was 60,000 words published in 2005. There has been 15 more years of light coming out of their albums, gigs and campaigning since then! Indeed, some of the songs that you are going to hear in this episode are from more recent times.

So, my challenge is to be concise. To do so I am going to go down three roads. 

I am going to look at the early days. U2’s 2014 album Songs Of Innocence gives us a lot to investigate if we wish to find out how the band came together and what the foundations of their raison d’être are. I will suggest that U2 is a spiritual vocation as well as being a rock band.

Then I will look at growing up in the faith. Jesus told Nicodemus that he had to be born again but he didn’t mean that rebirth was the end of the journey. It was but the beginning. Growing up again has not been so much emphasised in large swathes of evangelical Christianity particularly. U2 grew up in public and catalogued it in their art. There is a whole lot of light there.

Finally, we will look at the pastoral side of U2 and in that pastoral side how they can be helpful to a world struggling mentally, emotionally and spiritually as it lives through a viral pandemic. U2 were there to encourage Northern Ireland towards the Good Friday Agreement, there to help American after 9/11 and then again after the Bataclan concert massacre in Paris. We will find light there too.

Music in this episode is from the Fitzroy Collective. Expect inventive covers, powerfully performed. 

 

LIGHT FROM ROCK MUSIC VOL 3 - U2; DON'T LET IT GO OUT goes live on Sunday July 12th 2020 at 7pm - WATCH IT HERE

STARLESS - EARTHBOUND

This has been my biggest pleasant surprise of the year. I cannot even remember how I came across it. I am now absorbed in it. 

In the late 80s and early 90s I was Glasgow-centric in my music loves. I mean Deacon Blue. Aztec Camera, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, The Big Dish, The Bathers, Bloomsday, Friends Again, Hipsway, The Pearlfishers, Lies Damned Lies and Big Sur. It was a astonishing time and a lot of it seemed to fall away in the mid 90s.

Paul McGeechan fell away. He was in both Friends Again and Love and Money but got more involved in engineering and production. 

Finding Starless and discovering McGeechan had new music out had me scuttling off to listen. When I did it was even better than I could have imagined. Not the singer in Friends Again or Love and Money, McGeechan has used The Bathers’ Chris Thompson, The Big Dish’s Steven Lindsay and Hipsway’s Grahame Skinner as well as Julie Fowlis, The Delgados’ Emma Pollock and Jerry Burns. 

I was particularly delighted with Burns. Her Columbia debut in 1992 suggested she’d be huge but like Canadian Mary Margaret O’Hara she seemed to disappear but for a guest spot on a Craig Armstrong album.

I guess a good comparison to this Starless project would be Peter Gabriel’s Ovo where he was the sonic shaper but used the likes of Blue Nile’s Paul Buchanan (who sang on the first Starless record) and other for vocalists.. 

After all that I should finally get to the record. It is ambitious in its breath and depth. The singers aforementioned and their co-written songs get laid over with McGeechan’s piano and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra add a dramatic warmth. Then McGeechan adds the sound of the sea lapping shores of Scottish Islands and a dollop of Scottish Gaelic with Julie Fowlis and Karliene giving ethereal celtic vocals to the song and a sense of land and sea and sky to the theme.. 

It is no surprise that over all it sits snugly beside The Bathers and late Love and Money. I particularly love Chris Thomson and Steven Lindsay’s contributions, the former coming on as a Glaswegian Nick Cave on Calvary and the latter’s new version of Breakdown originally on his second solo album Kite. 

Earthbound is a very gorgeous piece of work. It is the second album in a trilogy. I am excited to discover the first one and cannot wait for the third. I also have my Bathers’, Big Dish, Love and Money and Jerry Burns records back out and have discovered one or two records that even the eagle eyed me have missed. 

The sweetest surprise that has prised open a treasure trove!

WERE THESE MY BEST DAYS (CORONAVIRUS TIMES)

I see a heron in the river

Without suspicion, oh so calm

Curiously watching me on the bank

Wondering what in nature I am

The wild is vibrant from this breather

Retreat to resurface our brutal tracks

Will we carry lessons into the opening

Or lose that hope in a hard fast reflex

 

The streets are getting busy 

I am looking both ways again

Yet the road that we are walking down

Has bend after sharp blind bend

Sometimes it’s not a map we need

But the right vehicle for the journey

So I’ll travel in patience and discipline

And pray the speed doesn’t over turn me.

 

Were these my very best days

Far from the joyless urgent howl

Taking refuge in the lockdown relief

From expectation’s constant scowl.