SOUL SURMISE

STOCKI'S TOP 10 RECORDS OF 2014

As I have reviewed the year in records I am convinced that it has been one of the best years for music in quite a long time. My #40-11 are bunged with top 10 records on any other year. My jury has struggled with decisions and I am sure I could shift about the numbers on any particular day. There are a few albums I am getting to late that might, with another week, make it in there!

My Number 1 is always an album that has subjectively touched me in heart, soul and mind as well as being an album that is artistically brilliant and consistent throughout. I rarely go for the obvious... and so again!

10. GENTRY MORRIS - THE NEXT GREAT GHOST TOWN

I wrote: “The songs are seamless and pour forth with consummate ease. They are immediate, almost familiar, and he has quite the voice to carry melodies and words that are as sweet as the proverbial nut.  The first two tracks here come across like Pernice Brothers classics, strong shimmering guitars. Those electric guitar throw shine and shade throughout. For me it is the melancholic yearning beauty of songs like Waste Your Life, Fall Again or, my song of the summer, Slow Decline that has you asking why on earth Nashville aren’t placing these songs across the industry.”

9. NATALIE MERCHANT

I wrote: “For the sonic delivery Merchant has not deconstructed the electric pop band template of her 10,000 Maniac days but she has over the years widened the palate and now throws in classical string moods (Ladybird and Giving Up Everything), smokey jazz shades (Black Sheep) and even successfully pulls off Gospel with a soul filled vocal duel with Corniss Stafford (Go Down Moses). It is all as tasteful as anything you might ever hear, with Merchant’s voice never more confident, assured and expressive in exactly the ways she now knows how to use it.”

8. THE WAR ON DRUGS - LOST IN THE DREAM

High up in most of the music press top 10 of the year, I came to this one late on in the year but it’s dreamy hypnotic beauty finally snuck through. Critics have name checked Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac and Dire Straits. They are all in the mix but the final sound is hazy, lazy and nothing like either.

7. TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS - HYPNOTIC EYE

I wrote: “It is sleeker and more popped up rock than the previous bluesy Mojo or indeed pretty much anything since Petty hooked up with his fellow Travelling Wilbury Jeff Lynne in 1989. This really is back to the Heartbreaker sound of the seventies, indeed U Get Me High could be an outtake from that very record, all Mike Campbell’s full on beautiful onslaught. Hypnotic Eye has memorable hooks in maybe more abundance than any Petty album but as my list of lyrics at the top of this review reveal the choruses carry a depth of spiritual, social and politic critique that penetrates the soul as much as the ears. Think Damn The Torpedoes with forty years more wisdom and knowledge of craft!”

6. DEACON BLUE - A NEW HOUSE

I wrote: “The excitement of possibility” is a phrase from a recent Ricky Ross interview. He is speaking about A New House, Deacon Blue’s seventh album, and these words are made flesh in a collection of songs that buzz with life and hope and rebirth… A New House is all about creating an inspirational hope for what could be. New beginnings, a new house, a new land, dreaming, believing and winning bombards the listener with positivity. Not that the former things are ignored. It is the happy memory of a new house in childhood that fires future newness. There are heartbreaking memories too which are reconciled so that life can move on.”

5. THE NEW BASEMENT TAPES - LOST ON THE RIVER

Bringing Marcus Mumford, Elvis Costello, Jim James, Taylor Goldsmith and Rhiannon Giddens all into a studio to work together is amazing in itself. Add the amazing T-Bone Burnette as producer makes it even better. After that throw them lyrics that Bob Dylan wrote in Woodstock. Come on! This was the dream ticket of 2014 and it didn’t disappoint!

4. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - HIGH HOPES

I wrote: “Ghost Of Tom Joad? Utterly extraordinary. Most songs get a rework that goes from band arrangement to unplugged. Tom Joad gets the reverse and I will say it again – extraordinary. It has the rustic Guthrie influences beginning before heading into Dylan circa Highway 61 territory and heads out on a highway that has never sounded more alive, adding to Springsteen’s own guitar wizardry with a blend of Rage Against the Machine, U2 and Lynyrd Skynyrd! One of Springsteen’s finest moments!

…

It is the work of a man heading towards the twilight, working hard and thinking clearly about the legacy he wants to leave. These are songs that needed heard. They are not just thrown together but though recorded over a long period of time are collected in a way that makes them whole. Harry’s Place broods with menace. Springsteen has said that it was written for George W Bush! Down In The Hole gives you the feel of weary toil. The Wall is full Streets Of Philadelphia poignant sadness. Heaven’s Wall and This Is Your Sword are more celebratory Boss with the latter giving another Pogues’ knees up to add to American Land! Hunter Of Invisible Game is a ballad with depth and poetic delight!”

3. OVER THE RHINE - BLOOD ORANGES IN THE SNOW

Over The Rhine. In my Top 3 for the third year out of four... and with a Christmas record. "love is touching souls, surely they touch mine!"

I wrote: “These particular songs are suffused with a melancholy that peels back the sentimentality of Christmas that even Christmas carols have yielded to the temptation of. In these songs people lose parents, are struggling with drink and homelessness. There is a world at war in the very place the Christ child was born to bring peace. These are songs that expose the sadness and weariness of a world on the brink of hopelessness.

Yet, there is hope being marinated through the whole batch. Grace’s baby; old hymns around the fire; sparkling rumours of redemption at play; faint Christmas bells; confidence and grace; a hope for all mankind; biblical verse in neon above the trash; bright future in a checkered past. 

2. U2 - SONGS OF INNOCENCE

Two hours after it was downloaded into our iTune account I wrote: “Headphones on. Press play! Eleven songs later and I am exhausted by the music, the emotion, the spiritual gems. U2 have blown me away all over again; when I expected it least. We will be getting our heads around album of the year being released free in an age when record companies need a big seller for some time. Let’s reflect on that later. Let us ask our first questions of the songs. 

Though not a concept album on Bono’s childhood there are a lot of songs that go back. The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) is conversion to the power of music and U2’s life’s pilgrimage begins. Raised By Wolves is about a Friday in Dublin city when loyalist paramilitaries blew the city centre and 33 people apart. Bono only missed it by having taken the bike and not the bus that day. Cedarwood Road is about the power of friendship on the street Bono grew up on. Most powerful of all is Iris (Hold Me Close) about Bono’s mum who died when he was 14. It is an emotional pummelling - “the ache in my heart is so much a part of who I am.” 

On first listen it would seem to me that that emotional heartache is a key to why the album hits. This is Bono at his most personal. These are not objective songs about creeds, political opinions or thoughts on love. This is Bono’s heart and soul right out there on his sleeve. Which might explain the voice. When has Bono ever sounded as good as this.”

1. STEVE TAYLOR & THE PERFECT FOIL - GOLIATH 

The jury has been out for about a week, wrestling with Over The Rhine, U2 and this one. This utter gem of a rock n roll giant (“no pun intended” - nor that one!) came out of nowhere and I couldn’t believe it was as awesomely brilliant as I kept thinking it was. It just is the rock album, literate album, socially and spiritually observant album and utterly hilarious album of 2014. Subtlety with a rock thud!

I wrote: “It rocks as well as anything has rocked this year. It would seem that the Perfect Foil is not just for wrapping but that all three are contributing at the heart. Furler writes melodies as well as great drum rhythms, Painter is one of the most versatile and imaginative players and Abegg can strum, riff and finger dance. All of that is in evidence throughout. There is a bass groove that thuds most sweetly and guitar licks that sprinkle like shards of brightest light.

On top of all of that Taylor’s lyrics are so poetic, prophetic, provocative, downright clever and so darn humorous that you can’t take your ears off it. English theologian John Stott spoke of “double listening”. No one does it better than Taylor. He is listening acutely to the soul numbing dangers of the world around him and how the culture bends and breaks us. He has also a sharp Biblical ear, that cuts through the shallow thinking and cheap cliche of most evangelical Christianity, and applies the Word to the world with sensitive grace but courageous truth. He brings Stott’s double listening together in the studio to create songs that everybody needs to listen to. 

The listener will feel a strength to fight a variety of empty enemies in a modern world of entertainment, celebrity and moulding us into its image. With many a depth charge some of them humorous (the high 5 in Goliath is beautifully done and the puns in Comedian are genius) we will be engaged artistically, spiritually and rebelliously. It is deftly subtle and tenaciously tough. Whatever your Goliath this will help! A Life Preserved might be a summary:

“Calling me out of the shallows of my world

Called to something graceful, something true

Gratitude's too cheap a word for all you've reassembled

From a spirit broken and unnerved

A life preserved.”

#40-31 click here

#30-21 click here

#20-11 click here

Click here for Stocki's Top 10 Box Sets, Tributes and Live Records 

 

 

STOCKI'S TOP 10 BOX SETS, TRIBUTES & LIVE RECORDS 2014

10. JOHN GRANT AND THE BBC PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA: LIVE IN CONCERT

A beautifully lush production of the great songs of John Grant. 

9. GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD (40TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION/DEUXE EDITION)

Forty years since Elton’s seminal album and to entice a new generation you get Ed Sheeran, Emile Sande and James Grant and Imelda May…

8. ANAIS MITCHELL - xoa

Gifted American songwriter redoes her best songs all acoustic. It brings out the very best of them. Tender and thoughtful.

7.  LOOKING INTO YOU: A TRIBUTE TO JACKSON BROWNE

Jackson Browne tribute was well over due. Lucinda Williams’ The Pretender stood out but there is Don Henley, Indigo Girls, Shawn Colvin and Bruce Springsteen among others.

6. THE ART OF MCCARTNEY

Top names do Paul McCartney… Dylan, Joel, Wilson, Nelson, Cooper, Kiss et al… Revealing the genius of the Fab one’s craft.

5.  DEAD MAN’S TOWN: A TRIBUTE TO BORN IN THE USA

Taking the over produced popped up Springsteen mega hit and giving it back its authenticity… with Holly Williams, Low and last year’s winner of Stocki’s Album of the Year Jason Isbell!

4. RYAN ADAMS - LIFE AFTER DEAF

A collection of all of Ryan Adams acoustic shows from the European Tour in 2011. Simply sensational! Get them individually or as a set. Better still do what I did and download the best from Emusic!

3. CROSBY, STILLS NASH & YOUNG - CSNY 1974

Forty years after the event a record of the legendary 1974 tour had enough soul, passion and ragged music making to ignore the  mixed reviews of the time. Some unreleased songs and various different arrangements.

2. WILCO - ALPHA MIKE FOXTROT: RARE TRACKS 1994-2014

A lovely boxset of outtakes, alternative mixes and live tracks.

1. BOB DYLAN - BOOTLEG SERIES VOLUME 11: THE NEW BASEMENT TAPES COMPLETE 

In the extra DVD disc of Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions album Springsteen speaks about the difference between playing music making music. He is in his home studio with that carnival band of playing he used for that project. The brass are out in the hallway. It is this loose jam of music making that brings something unique to the art. Springsteen call that difference - soul! I have no idea how much Bob Dylan’s legendary Basement Tapes influenced those Seeger Sessions but you really don’t need to contrive in order to connect them. 

If you are looking for meticulous playing, perfect mixes and pristine sound do not go anywhere near the Basement Tapes Complete, the eleventh of Bob Dylan’s official Bootleg Series. However, if you are looking for soul then listen no further. The perfect record this is not but for quaintness, wonder, genius and soul it is hard to find anything better.

Let me honest 1975’s The Basement Tapes is not one of my most worn out Bob Dylan records. The period between Blonde On Blonde and Blood On The Tracks not one of my most fixated Dylan eras. The idea of 139 tracks of Basement Tapes Complete had me a little underwhelmed. At least there was a 2 disc version that might would allow me to keep my Dylan collection up to date and give me a chance for a quick listen.

In the end I decided to “complete, complete, complete” as an old saying goes between me and my mate Geoff. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t splash out £100. No sir, I used the residue of October’s birthday money to do the download version! I figured that for an extra 20 quid I would have an extra 100 songs and that some of them might be worth the added investment.

Well, my early listens were as I had expected. With 139 songs it is inevitable that to get a quick overall picture of 139 songs I would initially skip and sample. My immediate response was to wonder what all the fuss has been about for 47 years. However, as the week went on and the album got time to settle and be given a longer slower digestion I have come to recognise the wonder of this phenomenal thing. 

In some ways The Basement Tapes are a phenomenal happening as much as they are a 6 disc CD album. For me a week of listening has allowed me to come to love the actual songs as much as I have come to be fascinated by the event. We’ll come to those songs in a moment. First, let us come to terms with the piece of rock history we are listening to. Dylan has been the amphetamine pumped pioneer of philosophical and politic rock music for a couple of years, moving from his acoustic civil rights folk protest to rocked up electrified voice of the 60’s zeitgeist. Suddenly, he’s gone. Rumours of a debilitating motor cycle crash but little else for 18 months. In 60’s music that was unheard of. 

This is the music he made in that down time. It is like a refreshing paddle in the river of some scenic valley after having surfed the highest crashing waves  of a stormy sea. The voice elf a generation limits his singing to a few rooms in upper New York State’s countryside and just plays his music for its own sake. Though never intended for release one wonders why Garth Hudson recorded so much. Yet, the feel is very much, jamming for fun. It is a unique window into the life and muse of one of rock’s iconic figures. That its legend and the music The band produced after it became the next musical shift in rock history is also a fascination. These tapes are what the Beatles were hoping to get at in Let It Be. Country rock and American are birthed here with Bob Dylan’s voice and songs and the utter genius of The Band’s musicianship. 

As I said, it took a few listens, but once my ears acclimatised to the at times smirky sound, I have come to utterly love the sound and vibe of this massive collection. We are back to Springsteen’s surmise. What you hear are brilliant musicians making music as they go, finding grooves and sounds to embellish old songs from the past and create new songs, some of which never had a future until this release (officially anyway!)

The completely reworked groove of Blowing In The Wind; the Johnny Cash fixation that includes Folsom Prison Blues and Balshazzer; the Irish folk of The Auld Triangle; The quirky surprise of the catchier than Dylan usually is Baby, Won’t You Be My Baby; and of course I am drawn to the spirituals, People Get Ready, Waltzing With Sin, Satisfied Mind that later turns up on Saved and the most interesting of all for me Sign Of The Cross.

Sign Of The Cross is the biggest song here so far officially unreleased. It needs a blog in itself but it highlights that alongside the fun loving music making, the humour, the covers and the songs written for others that Dylan is soul searching in the middle of this relaxation. It could be that this sign of the cross worries the jewish Dylan himself that he is in some ways a Messiah waiting to get crucified but more intriguing for me the personal journey of soul that led him to the Christian conversion of 1979 has started already. This jewish boy is emerging himself in the New as well as the Old Testament and here it leads to this inspired improvised testimony time. Utterly fascinating like this entire Bootleg Series edition!

 

GIVE YOURSELVES TO ONE ANOTHER (THE PAUL AND JANE WEDDING VERSION)

I wrote this poem for the wedding of Julie and Stephen Hoey back in 1991. Today I married Jane Anketell and Paul McGurnaghan and when I realised that they had chosen the Proverbs 3 passage featured in the poem I felt that it needed used. However, I was also taken by their other reading in Ephesians 2 about God breaking down the walls of hostility and making us one in the reconciling work of Christ. So, I added the Paul and Jane ending, praying that this couple, setting out today on their new beginning, might contribute to peace in our wee country. Bless you both and thank you for the privilege of being part of your day.

GIVE YOURSELVES TO ONE ANOTHER

Everything has fallen

From where it’s been

All of us are tainted

But Christ redeems

Everything is broken

Every hope and dream

All our love and affection

But Christ redeems

So give yourselves to one another

With everything you’ve got

Keep your eyes fixed on the cross

The price by which you’re bought

Walk down the road together

Through the darkness of the night

And may he be your vision

And may he be your light

Lean not on your own understand

Or on what the other says

In all your ways acknowledge him

And he’ll direct your ways.

And may your ways make peace

May grace break down the walls

May you find peace together

And bring peace to us all

Everything is broken

Every peace filled dream

All our grace and loving

But Christ redeems.

 

STOCKI's ALBUMS OF 2014 - #20 - 11

20. THE GLOAMING

Irish Trad with a difference… from the Gaeltacht to New York…a work of world beating musicians stretching their art to new vistas of gorgeousness and achievement.

19. MARIANNE FAITHFUL - GIVE MY LOVE TO LONDON

She’s no vocal wonder but she has something that brings something to the work of Nick Cave, Steve Erale and Leonard Cohen to name a few.

18. DAVID GRAY - MUTINEERS

Took him awhile but Gray was back with an album above average and bland. Lots of birds in flight, soaring into the blue distance calling and there is not a cat in sight!

17. ELBOW - THE TAKE OFF AND LANDING OF EVERYTHING

“Oh my god New York can talk
Somewhere in all that talk is all the answers
Everybody owns the great ideas
And it feels like there's a big one round the corner”

Big questions and some answers

16. LEONARD COHEN - POPULAR PROBLEMS

80 years of life, spiritual thinking and poetic craft. It is a delight to not only listen to the music of Leonard Cohen but to benefit from his musings.

15. DAVID CROSBY - CROZ

Crosby rarely does solo but he odes and Croz has that folky foundation, gets layered in those distinctive Crosby vocals and then adds jazzy decoration on top.

14. JACKSON BROWNE - STANDING IN THE BREACH

Music to give strength for the transformation within and without. Are we walls or doors? Are we standing in the breach? 

13. LUCINDA WILLIAMS - DOWN WHERE THE SPIRIT MEETS THE BONE

Sprawling Texas drawling bluesed up lump of utter splendour and inquisitive realistic view of the world.

12. BECK - MORNING PHASE

I often get lost in Beck's prodcution and miss his social obervations but not with this. It's like he ran off to Woodstock and conjured the ghosts of music past.  

11. FIRST AID KIT - STAY GOLD

Swedish sisters dish up a harmony fest and quirky country come pop that dug deep in sound and soul.

for # 30-21 click here

STOCKI'S ALBUMS OF 2014 - #30 - 21

30. HOZIER 

Co Wicklow phenomenon of the year. I didn’t get it just as much as everyone everyone else but it is good!

29. DAMIAN RICE - MY FAVOURITE FADED FANTASY

The let’s say not that prolific Damian Rice gave us a few more tunes at last. Stripped back to the barebones of instrumentation gave them a haunting delight. 

28. SINEAD O’CONNOR - I’M NOT BOSSY, I’M THE BOSS

When Take Me To Church grabbed my attention in early summer I was expecting an amazing work from Sinead. All in all it didn’t live up to the single but as always with Sinead’s madness and intrigue it threw up many a moment of wonder. 

click for review

27. STEVIE NICKS - 24 KARAT GOLD; Songs From The Vault

Demoes from way back, discovered and covered in production turned out to be Nicks most satisfying solo work in decades!

click here for review

26. DAVID WILCOX - BLAZE

Ric Hordinski produced Wilcox record was a gem of medical and spiritual ruminations. Sacrifice and Single Candle of particular brilliance.

click for review

25. COLDPLAY - GHOST STORIES

More experimental and ambient than the Eno produced Mylo Xyloto, Ghost Stories haunted with break up beauty.  

24. LUKE SITAL-SINGH - THE FIRE INSIDE

Songwriter with a plethora of imaginative ways to use a guitar, a variety of intriguing harmonies and even a dab of battered brass, Singh and producer Iain Archer shift moods at will… great debut!

click here for review

23. NOAH GUNDERSEN - LEDGES

One review desribed this as "Demolition-era (Ryan) Adams with a well-thumbed bible in his pocket." Understated in sound but weighty in purpose and power.

22. SPOON - THEY WANT MY SOUL

Riff driven 70’s Stones with a bag full of cosmic questions. Their best!

click for review

21. LITTLE MATADOR

Dirtier and darker than his day band Snow Patrol but just as compelling in the melodies beneath.

click here for # 40-31

STOCKI'S ALBUMS OF 2014 - #40 - 31

40. THE PEARLFISHERS - OPEN UP YOUR COLOURING BOOK

Glasgow’s David Scott has that innate ability for melody, harmony and sunny shades in the rainy east of Scotland. 

39. ANNA CALVI - ONE BREATH (Deluxe Edition)

Calvi is an artist with guitar, song and performance. Make sure you get the deluxe edition with Strange Weather EP attached.

38. ERIC BIBB - BLUES PEOPLE

Bibb plays Blues with a smile and Blues People with its nod of the cap to Martin Luther King Jr is about spiritual and political transformation. We, in Fitzroy, have using Needed Time in worship. Lovely!

37. IMELDA MAY - TRIBAL

Imelda May is simply a vocal force of nature. Rockabilly Revival continues on Tribal.

36. CHRISSIE HYNDE - STOCKHOLM

I’ve always loved that Chrissie Hynde voice and Stockholm is a collection of great tunes.

35. RODDY FRAME - SEVEN DIALS

The jangly guitars are back and not before time. Wonderful songwriting. Postcard with its references to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours a highlight! 

34. JON ALLEN - DEEP RIVER 

I described this one as a pastoral record with deep resonance… Think Nick Drake with JJ Cale on guitar. 

33. WHITE CHOLERA - BANK

One web page described it “Drums. Dustbins. Trombones. Guitars. Economics. Love. Death. Religion. Shopping”… The mad genius that is Eanna Hickey on record at last.

32. ERIC CLAPTON & FRIENDS - THE BREEZE: AN APPRECIATION OF JJ CALE

We lost JJ Cale last year and gained this tribute record featuring Tom Petty, Wille Nelson, John Mayer and Mark Knopfler among others wrapping their voices around Clapton guitar! 

31. RYAN ADAMS

Ryan has been erratic and eclectic and I guess this record, that is both rock and acoustic, is both but a nice addition to the catalogue all the same.

THE INNOCENT LOST

THE INNOCENT LOST

I was the innocent lost

Without any reason

In the future they’ll call this

The family season

I was ripped from my mother’s arms

My head was torn from my shoulders

No chance of becoming something

No chance of getting older.

 

And I guess I died in place of him

So he could go free

 I guess I died in place of him

 I wonder if he’d die for me?

 

There was blood on the streets

There were tears across the nation

There was wailing at Jerusalem’s wall

For God to give an explanation

And I’m a dead bundle of skin and bone

Nothing left of me but the mourning

But a mother escapes, a refugee

An angel came with a warning.

 

And I guess I died in place of him

So he could go free

I guess I died in place of him

I wonder if he’d die for me?

 

 

100 YEARS AGO TODAY... 1914 YEARS EARLIER (CHRISTMAS TRUCE)

100 years ago today, in 1914… Soldiers all shivering. Maybe your Granda or great Granda… Shivering with cold. Trembling with fear. They had left their homes and families. Called by their country to fight. Here they were on Christmas Eve in the trenches of France. 100 yards away were the enemy, Germans pointing guns, landing shells, trying to kill and maim. 

So here they were. At war. Their young lives on the line. Many would be killed. Only some would see their family again. And even then changed forever.

1914 years earlier… Shepherds were out in the cold night. They were wrapping up warm. They were looking after the flocks. They were alert to every danger, to every beast that would prowl and pounce and kill the sheep. They wouldn’t sleep. They would keep watch. Hoping for a quiet night.

100 years ago today, in 1914… Suddenly out of the tension and silence… a noise. A beautiful noise… coming across the killing fields of No Man’s Land… the Christmas Carol Silent Night… being sung in German… a Christmas song… cutting deep into the tender hearts of the soldiers… on both sides of the war. 

As the sound wafted in the Christmas Eve breeze… a few Scottish soldiers joined in… a bagpipe played Silent night… the soldiers started to sing… Both sides harmonising… different languages… different sides… united in Christmas.

1914 years earlier… Suddenly the night was alight… the shepherds covered their faces… they were frightened… sore afraid… What was happening… where were the sheep… were they in danger… “DO NOT BE AFRAID”… it was an angel… “I come to bring you good news of great joy…. Today in the city of David, a Saviour has been born who is Christ the Lord”… Wow! 

100 years ago today in 1914… the singing went on… and then slowly but very surely… a few soldiers peered out over their trenches… climbed out and sat on top… still singing. After some singing a few intrepid soldiers approached each other… reached out their hands and shook hands… someone threw down a can and they started kicking it back and forward… a few sat down and showed each other pictures of their loved ones back home… through language differences they smiled… found a drink to share… a piece of chocolate… 

And for a moment the world was at peace… 

1914 years earlier… a choir of angels stepped out from behind the angel and started singing… what a beautiful sound… Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace on those on whom his favour rests… 

With that they were gone. The night was still. “Let’s go and find this baby,” the shepherds said and scurried off with joyous abandon to find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger… As they reached out to touch the child they didn’t realise… that in that moment peace was made between a holy God and fallen humanity… God had so loved the world that he had sent his only son… the veil was being rent in two… peace was being made between a holy God and fallen humanity… peace was being made inside human souls… peace was being made between human beings. 

The world could once again be at peace… This baby means that we could all step out of our trenches… and never go back in!

GARY LIGHTBODY, NATHAN CONNOLLY AND IAIN ARCHER IN BANGOR ABBEY

Iain Archer is a consummate songwriter who suits this setting like few other Irish singers alive. He has the poise, the musical genius, the sense of place. He times every strum, reckons on the impact of every breath and vocal sound. He has that great attribute of being uninterested in impressing because the beauty and the art of imgamining are far more precious. He was born for a few songs in Bangor Abbey. 

Frozen Lake was such a good start that you wondered if the rest of the night could match it (Davy… see what I did there!). This is a song of spacious wonder and Archer’s voice with delicate grace just gently filled the Abbey. Black Mountain Quarry had words tumbling in an appropriate geographical place. I Am A Landslide is such a piece of exquisite writing that it only makes you wonder why it is, so far, his only songwriting contribution to the Tired Pony catalogue. 

He finished with the mesmerising Canal Song but for me the highlight was Everest. It set us on a theme for the evening. Here were three young men who have flown the coop to make their mark on the world returning home for Christmas and letting a few fans in on what was an intimate night with friends and family. Everest was the first of many asides and dedications to family and how family can help us climb the insurmountable. The spiritual psalm-like conclusion - “Some other day, when my morning comes, I’ll be the one that’s waited all night” - made the Abbey a holy space once more. Soul caressing stuff!

Nathan Connolly had everything against him. He was on after Iain Archer who, as we have said, is musically honed for this kind of terrain. It is not Connolly’s terrain at all. His Little Matador record has been a 2014 highlight with its ambitious post punk/post grunge shaped slab of dark heaviness. Yet, a band is required. To do this naked and vulnerable exposed Nathan as not quite as deftly a player as his two buddies. He admitted that it as one of his first ever acoustic gigs and songs like Liar Liar slowed down and lengthened from its 1.50 recorded version suffered a little in the translation. Stitch Yourself Up and Shatter didn’t though. These are clever catchy things and a reminder of just how good the songs on the Little Matador debut are. More successful too was, The One I Love, his contribution to the movie The Test which he worked with Declan O’Rourke on. Like Archer he ended with a song about the strength of family; a cover, Where We Stand. 

Gary Lightbody has no such front man struggles. He is one third of the coolest Northern Irish Men alive triumvirate, along with Jamie Dornan and Rory McIlroy. He has the gift of charm and the gab and immediately seems like an old friend just chattering away which might have been helped by the fact that most of the audience might indeed have been friends; Jonny Quinn was front row for goodness sake. Lightbody's patter between songs is natural, funny and tonight confessional, emotional and deep. 

Those great Snow Patrol tunes are revealed in greater greatness in their ability to come back down from their stadium anthem mountains to become fragile beautiful pieces of songwriting in this most intimate of locations. Chocolate was reinvented; Lifening was what it is; Crack The Shutters was all sensual and a little red faced in a sacred space; and Tired Pony’s All Things All At Once was perfectly placed for its west coast sound. Of particular stand out in this vulnerability was Golden Floor with it’s “I'm not afraid of anything even time/It’ll eke away at everything but we'll be fine”. We were back to that theme of making it through standing side by side with loved ones.

The theme of family then became very much the centre piece as Lightbody explained the reason for tonight’s treat. He had been commissioned to write a few songs in tribute to fellow Northern Irishman, the poetic genius, Seamus Heaney. When he sang that suite of songs, in Magheraflet earlier in the year, his dad had been in hospital so he wanted to sing them again with his parents in the room. Explaining that Heaney was the poet, in Mr. McKee’s English class, that woke Lightbody up to school and words, first poetry and then songs makes sense of the literate wordiness of Snow Patrol’s work. 

Lighbody then sang those five songs about Granny, Dad and Ireland, north, south, east and west. This was the privilege of the night. It wasn’t just about hearing three singers in a smaller venue than usual in ways you don’t usually get to hear their songs. It was about these five, so far unrecorded, songs that reached as close to the emotional heart of a songwriter as you are likely to gain access. During Church, about his Granny, Lightbody was visibly moved and close to tears. That he was actually in a Church might mean that this is the most authentic playing of that song that will ever be performed. That he admitted that he believes his Granny still guides him and that here he was singing it in Church, a place obviously so important for her, was… well… flipping spookily religious! The Troubles and love of family, the geography and shaping of identity; these songs were born in Bangor where they basked tonight.

We came out of the Heaney songs into the hits. Run and Chasing Cars worked perfectly and indeed the congregational singing on Run was again perfect for the Abbey! There were times throughout when both Connolly and Lightbody appeared to be both thrilled with being in an Abbey and a little too cautious that their songs were a little too naughty for such a place. Boys, can this minister tell you that your gifts and your work, in their shades of darkness and light are more sacred than you seem to know. The genre of art that you pursue sits more authentically in such a space as this than I think you think.

I left in the glow of a unique treat. Yet, it wasn’t the hits that lingered. I am still pondering the night’s theme. Three songwriters all secure in their own skins, all successful beyond their backyards but all coming home to the realisation of where their vocations and confidences were honed; home with family, partners and friends. The chorus my soul is still singing is Lightbody’s It’s A Day Like That. He was 6 years old, shooting with his dad and they were shot…

It’s days like that you don’t know what hit you

It’s days like that you’re not sure who you are

But it’s days like that you know you’re not alone

And it’s days like that you know how much you’re loved.

Preach it, pastor us… darn it they could have even closed with it as a benediction!

OUTSIDE THE STABLE DOOR (Through Congested Traffic)

We drive through congested traffic
Stop for a day outside the door
Sentimental beginning to bigger things
We don't see anything more
The blinding bright revelation
Of God's wild and holy nerve
Baby's heart pumping out the love
That none of us deserve
There is a gift to be opened
But we just stare at the wrapping
In a room crammed full of food and lights
We miss the wonder of what's happening.

We drive through congested traffic
Park for a day outside the stable
We think we know the story well
But treat it like a children's fable
When He tells us all there is to know
Before He utters His first word
Wisdom in this foolish dirty straw
Sense meets us in the absurd
There is a gift to be opened
But we just stare at the wrapping
In a room crammed full of food and lights
We miss the wonder of what's happening.