SOUL SURMISE

JOHN LENNON - 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Mind Games as a song has taken 50 years to grow on me. 50 years! When as an 11 year old I started listening to the radio John & Yoko’ Happy Xmas was all over it. I loved it. 

Mind Games was John Lennon’s next single and it was too weird. The sound. Then these lyrics about Mind Guerrillas and Druid dudes. Far out man but not my favourite Lennon song even when as a 15 year old I became obsessed by him and his old band.

The album Mind Games was the first Lennon album that I bought and it was fine… after that title track. What most intrigued a teenager starting to make sense of the world was his silent track Nutopian National Anthem. 

As an 18 year old I was secretary of the Ballymena Academy Debating Society and in a Balloon Debate I tried to save my place in that metaphorical balloon by arguing the power of said Nutopia. My argument sadly was as empty as a few seconds of silence on record and I was well and truly chucked out of that balloon.

All of this has come back to me as the Lennon Estate drop the 50th Anniversary Edition of Mind Games. 6 CDs and 2 Blu-Rays of out takes and fascinating remixes. 

As a friend said, “bottom line the songs aren’t strong. Not sure any amount of polish will shift that”. It was hard to disagree. But then I listened.

The Raw Studio mixes and the out takes gave the songs a new perspective. The Ultimate mixes, or the new mixes of the original, reminded me that apart from Mind Games I loved the original album back in my teens. Out of The Blue and One Day At A Time are beautiful love songs. Most of this record is.

We shouldn’t be surprised at that. Yoko was Lennon’s muse since 1968. Plastic Ono Band and Imagine had their own love to Yoko songs and 7 years later Lennon’s last work would be love songs. It wasn’t just his mate Paul who sand about Silly Love Songs.

Elsewhere Lennon seems to have out his trust in humanity. Bring On The Lucie (Freeda Peeple) and Only People are more generalised protest than the naive and often times mistaken characters he was singing about on Sometimes In New York City.

Back around to that title track. Sinead O’Connor’s version had already opened up its possibilities but now with a more mature ear and the Sean Lennon mix from the Gimme Some Truth compilation I have come to quite love it. I’d even dare to say that it sits up there with Imagine in it’s peace on earth, faith in the future and love is the answer.

So, no Mind Games is not the album that Imagine is but neither should it be dismissed. Sean Lennon is giving his dad's work real refreshment. I think 6 CDs might be too many. I went for the double CD. Whatever these mixes are giving us all reason to reassess.

MADELEINE PEYROUX - LET'S WALK

In a recent interview Madeleine Peyroux shared that though she is not that spiritual outside her music, she really is in her music.

She spoke about a rhythm that she feels in the music as spiritual which fascinated me because from my very first listen to Let's Walk I was  particularly drawn to a sense of subtle groove throughout.

Some of the opening lyrics set up her intentions. On the opening, and immediately hypnotic, Find True Love she sings:

 

Listen to the blues and the gospel of Jesus

Feel the summer sunshine in the southern breezes

 

Jesus for someone not spiritual. In that same interview Peyroux spoke about Jesus. Not the Jesus of the American churches but the Jesus of the Gospels. As someone who preaches in those churches I have a wee smile in my soul that a jazz singer who doesn’t think she’s spiritual has such insight. Preach it sister!

Certainly as a follower of the Jesus in the gospel rather than American churches I can endorse this record as in keeping with such a gospel. Peyroux confesses her love for African- American academic, activist, theologian, Cornel West and his three pillars of truth, justice and love; justice being love lived out in public.

Yes, this is a record review and not only a good one but an album that is very good for lots of reasons. Known for being a brilliant interpreter of songs, think her versions of Dylan, Cohen and Waits and also her albums The Blue Room and Secular Hymns. Let’s Walk is all Peyroux’s own work, all songs written by her along with Jon Herington.

The murder of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, along with aforementioned Cornel West have certainly informed the record. Looking back to Martin Luther King Jr in Let’s Walk -

 

We'll see 

And we'll know 

We climb the mountainside where seeds were planted oh so long ago

 

With hopefulness in Blues For Heaven -

 

If the world was all inviting and love was always pure 

I'd never have to worry no more
If prospects were exciting and promises true and sure 

I'd never have to worry no more

But then I'd be in heaven 

Wondering what the worry was for

 

And to the future almost prayerfully in How I Wish -

 

Endlessly journeying 

Yet to hear freedom ring 

Must we all be tossed 

On our nation's cross 

Before the Truth is whole 

Oh my lost American soul 

No More”

 

It’s not all national. There’s personal development too and humour sometimes all at once as in Me and the Mosquito - 

 

Every mortal has its myst'ry and surely some redeeming feature 

There is inherent quality to every natural living creature 

But I won't know no doggone rest until I kill this little pest 

No veto when it's me and the mosquito

 

Peyroux delivers all this in that lazy jazzy folk way that she does. It’s intoxicating. It’s meditative. It’s imaginative. All in that gentle spirit rhythm. It’s the most complete work of Peyroux’s 30 year career. 

VAN MORRISON - LIVE IN ORANGEFIELD

It is time to forgive Van Morrison and move on. Like so many I have not been able to listen to our hometown genius since all his palaver about Covid conspiracies. 

So when this record was scheduled I was caught, maybe up on Cyprus Avenue!! Would I? Should I? Could I? I did. 

Well, this is a revelation of Van Morrison. The Man at his very best. It’s 2014. He covers most of his catalogue. He plays and sings it across that transcendent muse that only Van can conjure.

It has never been more poignant for Van to sing Got To Go Back:

 

When I was a young boy 

Back in Orangefield 

I used to gaze out 

My classroom window and dream.

 

The song Orangefield is also appropriately included in what must have been a throne of Ulster nights. Why was I not there!

This is a live record of a concert he gave in that very school. It is Van back among his people, in his place. Orangefield Secondary was closing its doors so who better to sing them out. Through the gig we find Van in playful form with personal asides to the crowd in his reminiscing.

BUT it is the music that shines. Celtic Excavation into a re arranged Into The Mystic, a signpost to where he is taking us. Lots of re arrangements, improvisations and those soul tingling moments. Then back to Belfast streets in a hard days work shuffle on Cleaning Windows with Be Bop A Lula jazzed up included. 

Enda Walsh’s recording and Ben McAuley’s mixing brings a real sharpness to the entirety. This is so well produced. The band are on it, as we should expect BUT some of Dave Keary’s guitar playing is the best I have heard on a Van record. The brass improvisation scatters grace notes throughout. 

Dana Masters’ vocals are also a standout. It is hard to believe that it was Masters’ very first gig with Van. She duets Sometimes We Cry as if she’s been inflecting Morrison melodies for years.

Northern Muse (Solid Ground) was maybe my first favourite Van song when I dabbled into Beautiful Vision in 1982. That religious girl in the County Down. In the end I married one!

 

She lifts me up

Fill my cup

When I'm tired and weary, Lord

And she keeps the flame

And she give me hope

[To] carry on

 

She does. Here the song is given a gentle exuberance and a new verse about a ladies choice dance and Auld Lang Syne. It’s near born again.

Hyndford Street. Oh my. This spoken word poem about the street Van was raised on and its neighbouring streets and rivers and churches. It takes on a holiness. The mystic on Belfast streets again. His carnal fun shout out ice cream at Fuscos cannot break the mood. This really is dreaming in God.

My only quibble, apart from sky blue writing on orange background on sleeve (oh dear!) would be the fade out of In The Garden. We know how he takes that one and almost clears the gap between heaven and earth. As he is taking us there, higher and higher in the Father and the Son and The Holy Ghost the songs fades… a pity.

BUT it doesn’t take too much away from an astonishing piece of live playing and recording. A very vital record of Van in full flight as he neared 70. This is the Van Morrison that we all love and want to remember as a “working man in his prime”.

My love is rekindled. Redemption in big Lurgan shovels! 

RICHIE FURAY - IN THE COUNTRY

I have been a long time Richie Furay fan. He was in Buffalo Springfield with Neil Young and Stephen Stills a founding member of Poco and also in super group Souther Hillman Furay Band. Along the way Furay found Jesus and became a church pastor. That’s a combination that grabbed this blogger’s attention.

So I have been a follower of his work since his 1976 album I’ve Got a Reason which was re-released on a Christian label some four years later. 

I was never a big fan of his later worship styled albums but was interested again with The Heartbeat Of Love and Hand In Hand as well as two energetic live records.

It is hard to believe that it is nine years since Hand In Hand and I guess I would normally be disappointed to wait almost a decade for a new album without any new songs on it.

However, In The Country is a cracking album of covers that reveals, in a world where our octogenarian rock heroes are struggling vocally, that Furay’s chops are still strong and flexible. With some amazing players around him, all at the peak of their craft, this is as musically strong record.

Three stand outs are Keith Urban’s Someone Like You that rocks it out of the blocks, we are reminded what a classic song Marc Cohn’s Walking In Memphis is and Gareth Brooks’ The River is country gem. 

I am left unconvinced by syrupy, I’m Already There but a different way to look at creation really works in John Denver’s Country Roads. Furay respects and highlights Denver’s finest moment.

Furay, a centre traditional evangelical Christian, sneaks his faith in too. In Cohn’s Walking In Memphis he slows it down to emphasise  “Rev Green would be glad to see you if you haven’t got a prayer” and tweaks another line to confess faith - “She said are you a Christian child/ I said Mam you got that right.”

Brooks’ The River turns to a Psalm in the pastor’s hands, particularly:

 

There's bound to be rough waters

And I know I'll take some falls

But with the good Lord as my captain

I can make it through them all

 

To close. An altar call from the pen of a wonderful writer on faith Julie Miller:

 

We don't know all the trouble we're in

We don't know how to get home again

Jesus come and save us from our sin

 

He looks nothing like it but Furay is 80. There are not many records left. Oh that returning to these might inspire one more great album.

MY FAVE 5 TRIBUTES, LIVE ALBUMS AND BOX SETS 2024... SO FAR

1. THE WATERBOYS - 1985

Six discs of different versions, radio sessions, cover versions etc that reveal The Waterboys to be creative superior to U2 in 1985. 

 

2. PAUL McCARTNEY & WINGS - ONE HAND CLAPPING

50 years to get to hear the entire live concert in the studio for a do documentary. Wings’ best line up or close to it. Brilliant.

 

3. DEACON BLUE - PEACE WILL COME

The extra disc of acoustic songs and covers on the You Can Have It All anthology at last arrived separate from the other £80 priced album package. For Record Store Day and on vinyl. Essential.

 

4. TRÚ - LIVE IN BELFAST

Like the gig they did at 4 Corners Festival, the harmonies arp you viscerally in love.

 

5. PETTY COUNTRY: A Country Music Celebration Of Tom Petty 

From Chris Stapleton, to Dolly Parton to Steve Earle, Willie Nelson and Margo Price we get these great Tom Petty songs. Not enough twists and tweaks though Rhiannon Giddens throws Don’t Come Around Here into other spheres. A great car journey playlist.

MY FAVOURITE DOZEN RECORDS OF 2024 SO FAR

 

1. BLUE ROSE CODE - BEAUTIFUL CIRCUMSTANCE

My discovery of the year so far. Edinburgh songwriter Ross Wilson loves Hibs and God which is perfect with me. A spirit of Hothouse Flowers about them too. I am smitten!

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

2. BONNY LIGHT HORSEMEN -  KEEP ME ON YOUR MIND/SEE ME FREE

Big favourites of mine just now and they even relocated to a pub in west Cork to record this. Anais Mitchell's voice is a wow and there's a gentle wee under the felt folk groove. 

 

3. T BONE BURNETT - THE OTHER SIDE

T Bone with a rare excursion out from behind the production and soundtrack chairs to create maybe his most accessible record. 

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

4. BRIAN HOUSTON - BELFAST TROUBADOUR

As I listen I feel I am listening to something from the 1940s and 50s but with a grace note of instrumentation or vocal woosh it’s almost futuristic at the very same time.

READ MY REVIEW HERE

 

5. MARTYN JOSEPH - THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO SAY

A near companion piece to the brilliant 1960 album, our Welshman is on a career high.

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

6. DANA MASTERS - REAL GOOD MOOD

What a voice?! Belfast's Mahalia with a collection of perfectly set songs penned with Cian Boyland. Boyland's piano adds to the wonder and mood!

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

7. CONCHÚR WHITE - SWIRLING VIOLETS

A Portadown lands his debut album on Bella Union. Nice. The album is more than nice. This is a great collection of songs adding drama with lo fi ambient experimentation. 

 

8. DEA MATRONA - FOR YOUR SINS

From busking in Belfast's Cornmarket as teenagers these young Downpatrick ladies are rocking and riffing it.

 

9. THE PEARLFISHERS - MIXED TAPES FOR GIRLS

That pop 60s sound that Davie Scott has beautiful captured asking me if all those very many tapes were a chat up line. Please no!

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

10. BEN GLOVER - AND THE SUN BREAKS THROUGH THE SKY

Glenarm's most famous musical son sings songs of leaving or coming home. As always it is rather excellent.

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

11. CARA DILLON - COMING HOME

As done during Covid, poems about home in Dungiven set to music and also in book form with amazing photos.

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

12. THE BREEZE - THIN PLACES

If the sixties Laurel Canyon had been set in Lurgan Armagh not Los Angeles then The Beach Boys and Neil Young might have sounded like this. 

 

 

 

PAUL MCCARTNEY & WINGS - ONE HAND CLAPPING

I have heard it said that your favourite music will always be what you listened to in your mid-teens. Well in the summer of my 15th year I discovered The Beatles and that Christmas Santa left me Wings Over America. It was a life long commitment from then!

I love different periods of Paul McCartney’s post Beatles’ career but 1974-76 improbably my very favourite. I am a Jimmy McCulloch even more than our own Northern Irish Henry McCullough from 1973. Band On The Run through Wings At the Speed Of Sound is my time.

So, needless to say, I am absolutely loving One Hand Clapping finally released, 50 years after the event. Though we have had some of the tracks on deluxe editions of original albums this is the first time to have it all together under one album cover. 

One Hand Clapping is a band playing live in Abbey Road for a live documentary and now five decades later remixed by Giles Martin, George’s son, who has been working on the Beatles’ remixed anniversary records. The sound is strong and sharp as a result.

The Sessions feel warm, laid back and humorous throughout. The band as tight as the proverbial nut. Magnificent performances and little changes to originals, never more so than on Bluebird with its brass ending. The aforementioned Jimmy McCullough brings som tasty guitar too. The medley of C Moon, a little less poppy itself, and Little Woman Love makes the latter seem weightier than the B-side of Mary Had A Little Lamb!

Strewn across are unreleased tracks, at least unreleased at the time and for some time afterwards. I cannot help wonder why their next record Venus and Mars didn’t catch the snippets of Let’s Love, All Of You or Love My Baby instead of a reinvented theme tune form the naff soap opera Crossroads.  

Treats include a wee bit of jazz fun on Baby Face and a raucous Blue Moon Of Kentucky reminds us of the variety of influences always at work in the work of Paul McCartney. Power Cut gets Music Hall humour as this band seem to be having fun.

Even better in my limited edition pack we get a 7” of short McCartney unplugged. Three covers, Blackbird, Country Dreamer and the unreleased Blackpool. Cherries on cake!

Favourites? Too many but great to hear Tomorrow getting little respect. I grew up with the David Cassidy version! The fresh snippets of The Beatles are cool. Maybe best of all Live and Let Die and Nineteen Hundred and Eight Five have real menace and mood. 

I am enjoying everything that surfs on a tidal waves of Jimmy McCulloch that I love  Junior’s farm, Jet, Let Me Roll It, Band On The Run and Hi Hi Hi. Even Wild Life becomes robust beneath McCulloch’s riffing. 

Me being 15 and Paul McCartney’s most creative period blend beautifully right here. His Wings are soaring. Worth waiting for this document of glory days.

TRÚ LIVE IN BELFAST

In a musical world where it is in fashionable to re-boot, refresh or re-invent traditional Irish music Trú are doing it with their voices.

That should not be a surprise when you discover that two of the three members of the band met while singing with Anúna described as “one of the most distinctive and original vocal ensembles in the world”.

Trú throw in menace and tenderness in their percussion, mood in some low whistles and grace notes in economic electric guitar but the force of what they do comes through the harmonies. 

When I say force I mean force. We were thrilled to have had them at the 2024 4 Corners Festival and I found the harmonies holding me tight. It was visceral, like the tenderest thud in my chest. Utterly sublime. I have said it before and I’ll say it again that listening to Trú is like being there when Crosby, Stills and Nash found that blend of voices at the end of the sixties.

I came away from that 4 Corners Festival event waxing lyrical and feeling a yearning for a live record that would somehow reflect the evening. It was with joy that I heard Michael say that it was already in the works.

Live In Belfast is that record. Recorded at Duncairn Arts Centre in September 2023 it has doesn’t lose that earthy live sound as the band takes us all across Ireland to Scotland and as far as France with tales put to song. Like all good trad albums there is respect to the origins of the songs as hear about their stories and locations. 

In the end we are left with the voices, three pallets blended for different effect. Lovely Molly could be a Woodstock outtake from aforementioned Crosby, Stills and Nash, Is Fada liom uiam i has the fragile sorrow of lament, Ay Waukin O is like sacred liturgy in some big and beautiful Cathedral, and Rabbie Burn’s Love Is A Red Red Rose intimate and romantic. Everything hitting spots you didn’t know you needed hit.

Two albums in is early for a live record but not for Trú. Live is where they soar.

THE PEARLFISHERS - MAKING TAPES FOR GIRLS

You can tell that Pearlfisher main man (Davie Scott) and I are the same era from the title of the band’s tenth record, Making Tapes For Girls.

Can I say at this stage that not every tape that I gave a girl was a form of chat up line. Honest. At least I am trying to convince myself. I did love making tapes of varying compilations and certainly some were made for girls who needed more Deacon Blue, Van Morrison and The Waterboys in their lives. Boys needed educated too. It dates me and Davie Scott.

Not far into the opening title track we find out more that Scott and I have in common. About the aforementioned tapes for girls he sings:

 

“I didn’t know how to say the right things

So I left it to Joni and Paul”

 

It is not “Joni and Bob” or “Joni and John” or “Joni and Van”. Nope, Scott is a McCartney fan. When you are a Paul McCartney fan it is important to have allies. The man who led the biggest band in the world in their best years of recording often gets a soft sentimental dismissal by those who think Lennon was all tough revolutionary! Double Fantasy anybody?!?!

Of course it could be Paul Simon but I don’t think so. The easiness on the ears of everything on a Pearlfishers’ album, particularly this one, reeks of Paul McCartney’s most natural way with melody - “So don’t let them tell you/The melody is too sweet” (Kisses On the Window). You can add to Macca the influences of Brian Wilson and underneath it all Burt Bacharach, the latter particularly in the luscious strings. 

Bring the amalgam to the satellite towns around Glasgow and I would describe it as a slightly less angular Aztec Camera. Yet, what Scott does is to take all these wonderful influences and create his own sound.

These songs seem to be as nostalgic in context as the sounds. As well as making tapes he is a boy in an inauspicious childhood dreaming about making hit records that will take them to American cities. 

The childlike piano ballad closer of Sweet Jenny Bluebells suggests that grandchildren are sending Scott into a particular muse - “the wild lives that we met when we were young” (Wild Lives), as another song goes. 

And it has me pondering my childhood and teens, wondering of we made it and are those the best years or are the best still to arrive:- 

 

Hold Out For some thing spiritual

Hold out for something magical

Hold out for something that makes you breathe like a child

Hold out for a mystic (Hold Out For A Mystic)

 

Enjoying Making Tapes For Girls is like breathing like a child. 

BLUE ROSE CODE - BRIGHT CIRCUMSTANCE

Two social media messages, from two different places, in one evening. One was about the band’s spirituality. The other was about their love of Hibernian FC, my favourite Scottish team. Two songs, Do Not Be Afraid and Edina. Suddenly I had a new obsession. A new favourite band. I bought 3 records within an hour.

How I missed Blue Rose Code is a mystery. An annoying one. They even performed at a Festival I spoke at in 2015. I must have been too tired.

My new addiction comes at a perfect time as only last month the band released a new record Bright Circumstance. As I am only now deep diving their back catalogue, and only skittering across, I cannot say for sure but I am going to surmise that this is their most complete record.

Main man Ross Wilson suggests an unholy trinity at work in his music - Morrison, Martyn and Waits - but here so much more in this eclectic set that for me overall has a Scottish version of the Irish Hothouse Flowers in its hard DNA. Caledonian Soul perhaps to steal another Morrison moniker. 

The piano bedding to all that sits above it, the Gospel/Soul spirit to it. It always feels that they are not just playing the songs over again but creating and recreating as it goes. 

The drive of the opening Jericho, the brass of Never Know Why, the very Van Morrison Amazing Grace that would have sat nicely on Into The Music. Imagine it coming after The Healing Has Begun! 

The spiritual is as omnipresent as the piano. Jericho makes the Old Testament story personal. I could use Peace In Your Heart in every pastoral visit and the closing Now The Big Man Has Gone On is a prayer for a lost mate. Do Not Be Afraid is  a little sermonette full of proverbs. 

Around this faith base we can move into the sadness of Sadie, a friend where redemption looks far off and the more mournful Thirteen where we get a political critique of thirteen years of Tory austerity. 

Bright Circumstances is just that. Songs plugged into the reality of a dark world now lit up with hope and mercy and daring to head towards joy. 

I am addicted and on a journey into the depths of Blue Rose Code.