SOUL SURMISE

RUNABAY - BETWEEN THE LINES

Could anything good come out of Nazareth, they said of Jesus. Well, can a contender for rock album of the year come out of the Glens of Antrim, might be a similar question. Just as Jesus appeared fully formed to change the world forever, so Runabay appear adult and mature with many interesting nuggets on life to reflect on. I’ll leave the metaphor there… (but just to say for the theologically obsessed and paranoid, this is not a theological comparison!!)

I first heard Runabay in the Welcome Area of Fitzroy during a SoFar gig at the end of 2016. I was captivated by the harmonies, the cello and the laid back groove. They used the cello like an East Antrim pedal steel, giving their music a rustic authenticity and the harmonies sounded like the gentle waves caressing the Antrim Coast road. It all blended into a beautiful soothe of a sound.

Like everything down the Glens, it has taken time for the album to come out and having anticipated it for coming up on three years I am not at all disappointed. 

The whole thing begins with Dublin beat poet Stephen James Smith’s spoken word:

 

We must create to know who we can be

I say this for you, I say this for me

We must create to know who we can be

 

Preach it poet brother. I am all over such a philosophy of life. For me God set us all off on that path. He created and when humans were formed in his image the only thing we could know about ourselves was that we meant to be creative.

Anyway, Smith’s opening lines and ending reprise is (once again) not in any way theological, as much as two book ends between which Runabay create to know themselves. In doing so in a tracklist of crafted songs they give us hints to help us know our universal humanity. Smith’s sets a high literary and musical bar for every note, word and rhyme. You I Know calls us to “listen”. We should!

As I have said, the listening is a joy. They have been compared to so many bands but, believe it or not, I heard echoes of The Moody Blues; the spoken word, the layered instrumentation and the harmonies. They might just have been added to my dream Fitzroy bill along with Over The Rhine and Romantica (playing Fitzroy on June 17th!!!). They would fit perfectly!

In the end there are undoubtedly hints of west coast California but Runabay have conjured their own original East Coast sound, East Coast of Antrim that is. 

As with the Glens Of Antrim don’t expect it easy to find or purchase. No iTunes or Spotify or Amazon. This is only found on the narrow bendy roads of Bandcamp or the band’s website. Info about songs or the band is equally tricky to eek out. Like that wee beach at Murlough Bay, this is a hidden gem… but once found… you’ll be returning… again and again! 

ROMANTICA - AMERICA

An album called America with a host of references to Belfast and Donegal gives a clue to the background of singer and songwriter Ben Kyle. Brought up in Northern Ireland until his late teens he then moved to Minneapolis where he formed Romantica. America is their second album and it is a beauty. Think Over The Rhine with a male vocal or Ryan Adams with a gentler voice. The songs had my ears and soul pricking up at regular intervals with instrumental flourishes, some from ex Wilco and Jayhawks girl Jessy Green, and lyrical twists and turns that are clever yet never over indulgent.

National Side is intoxicatingly infectious, pure unadulterated catchiness with great lyrics, laced with humour and a family’s past and future. The only slight problem might be the references to FA Cup and rhyming Gary Linekar with Salt and Vinegar might not be so easily understood in America’s mid west but he does get to pop reference David Beckham before he sets America on fire with LA Galaxy.

There is a retrospective thread to the entire album with memories of life in Belfast or family holidays to the Gulf Of Mexico. Fiona, another radio friendly hit if there ever was one, takes a bleak look at Belfast. Listening to it in the post Adams and Paisley photo op that brings a bright future ever more probably, makes it sound like a bygone age, where bombs were exploding, policeman were frightened and Belfast was going nowhere. In painting the grimness of Belfast’s past it somehow brings out the joy of where it actually has gone.

There’s a sense too that Kyle has taken Sufjan Stevens’ contribution to rock on board. The brass on National Side shows it in the arrangements but where so many seem to think that you have to be over clever and complicated in the post Sufjan days Kyle moves more in the slip stream of his story telling and the spirit of capturing places and people. Kyle seems smart enough to know what to be influenced by and what to avoid trying to copy.

Another similarity of Stevens is Romantica’s ability to talk spiritual without pontificating dogma. Drink The Night Away is the most played song on my Ipod and seems to be about the reckless tragedy of teenage drinking exploits until theological questions are asked of Jesus. In the subtlest and soul-song-stopping twist Jesus appears in the last scene to raise the cup and "drink the night away."

The fragile God Walks On The Water is one for quiet reflection at any time of doubt or struggle. It is as honest and accurate a lesson in pilgrimage as you will hear in many a long year: "God walks on the water/I walk through the rain/One day we’ll walk together/When he comes back again."

Everything about the album is seemingly so effortless. I predict Album of the Year already!

An album called America with a host of references to Belfast and Donegal gives a clue to the background of singer and songwriter Ben Kyle. Brought up in Northern Ireland until his late teens he then moved to Minneapolis where he formed Romantica. America is their second album and it is a beauty. Think Over The Rhine with a male vocal or Ryan Adams with a gentler voice. The songs had my ears and soul pricking up at regular intervals with instrumental flourishes, some from ex Wilco and Jayhawks girl Jessy Green, and lyrical twists and turns that are clever yet never over indulgent.

National Side is intoxicatingly infectious, pure unadulterated catchiness with great lyrics, laced with humour and a family’s past and future. The only slight problem might be the references to FA Cup and rhyming Gary Linekar with Salt and Vinegar might not be so easily understood in America’s mid west but he does get to pop reference David Beckham before he sets America on fire with LA Galaxy.

There is a retrospective thread to the entire album with memories of life in Belfast or family holidays to the Gulf Of Mexico. Fiona, another radio friendly hit if there ever was one, takes a bleak look at Belfast. Listening to it in the post Adams and Paisley photo op that brings a bright future ever more probably, makes it sound like a bygone age, where bombs were exploding, policeman were frightened and Belfast was going nowhere. In painting the grimness of Belfast’s past it somehow brings out the joy of where it actually has gone.

There’s a sense too that Kyle has taken Sufjan Stevens’ contribution to rock on board. The brass on National Side shows it in the arrangements but where so many seem to think that you have to be over clever and complicated in the post Sufjan days Kyle moves more in the slip stream of his story telling and the spirit of capturing places and people. Kyle seems smart enough to know what to be influenced by and what to avoid trying to copy.

Another similarity of Stevens is Romantica’s ability to talk spiritual without pontificating dogma. Drink The Night Away is the most played song on my Ipod and seems to be about the reckless tragedy of teenage drinking exploits until theological questions are asked of Jesus. In the subtlest and soul-song-stopping twist Jesus appears in the last scene to raise the cup and "drink the night away."

The fragile God Walks On The Water is one for quiet reflection at any time of doubt or struggle. It is as honest and accurate a lesson in pilgrimage as you will hear in many a long year: "God walks on the water/I walk through the rain/One day we’ll walk together/When he comes back again."

Everything about the album is seemingly so effortless. I predict Album of the Year already!

MAVIS STAPLES - WE GET BY

What a late burst of artistic energy the life of Mavis Staples has given us. Only Johnny Cash can claim such a prolific seventh decade. Of Staples 14 solo records over fifty years, 5 have been in the last decade! All of them have been brilliant and crucially relevant to our times.

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy has been up until now what Rick Ruben had been to Cash. For We Get By, Staples has shifted to Ben Harper. Quite the risk. Quite the success!

Ben Harper? Well Mr Harper was a conduit for some of my coolest cred. Having discovered him early on in his career, I spread the word and my friend Jimmy Symington tipped off none other than Terri Hooley who on a stage in front of me one evening credited the Reverend Steve Stockman for him discovering Ben Harper.

Any even brief glance at Harper’s CV makes his collaboration with Staples seem obvious. A blues guitarist with interest in Gospel and protest, he has worked with The Blind Boys Of Alabama and even wrote with Staples on Love and Trust on her Livin’ On A High Note record.

Harper writes all the songs on We Get By and he has sussed out perfectly Mavis’s life, struggles and spirituality. 

The opening Change lays out the context of modern America for the African American:

 

Fingers on the trigger around here

Fingers on the trigger around here

Bullets flying, mothers crying

We gotta change around here

Get it straight, be sure that you hear

Things gonna change around here

 

The entire collection, of which I particularly love Stronger, Sometimes and the title track, sings of the resilience that comes from love and faith. Everything is based around that voice and Harper’s tough blues strum, sometimes driving Mavis along, at other times gently weeping; always strong and foundational.

If there is a weakness, perhaps it is the variety of sound and lyric that Tweedy brought but on this one We Get By is all the better for the change. 

KIERAN GOSS AND ANNIE KINSELLA - OH, THE STARLINGS

Janice and I were getting into a lift in a Belfast hotel when we turned to see Kieran Goss and a woman about to join us. In the few floors together they were warm, friendly and full of personality. It was a lovely encounter.

The last Kieran Goss album I had bought was Blue Sky Sunrise and so on getting home I checked out any new releases. Well, who would have believed it. Kieran had just released a new record, a collaboration with his wife, Annie Kinsella, the woman in the lift. Sorry Annie, I didn't realise!

I started listening to Oh, The Starlings and was immediately drawn in.  

Surprising to me, the woman in the lift, was doing the vocal heavy lifting with Kieran playing a more supporting role on most tracks. Annie Kinsella is good. A pure voice, evocative, with an Irish tinge. The west of Ireland betrays her on WB Yeats' The Song Of Wandering Aengus and she could even be a gentle Mary Coughlan on Into Your Arms.

The songs. What struck me, as I glanced across the credits, was the strength of songwriting power around Newry, County Down. Brendan Murphy, from the 4 of Us, is a co write on 4 of the songs and Colum Sands, from just down the road in Rostrevor, features too, on maybe the highlight track for me Michael's Orchard. 

Not that I could describe any of these songs as fillers. This is the strongest of collections. The yearning love song Hymn To Love blends in the spiritual like Van Morrison's Have I Told You Lately, Hollywood Boulevard, a long way from Sugar Island, is insightful social comment and Rodney Crowell's Jewel Of The South is poetically at the top of the class. All said, Goss and Kinsella's title track is breathtaking in the sweetness of its simplicity.

In the end the record was exactly like those few moments in the hotel lift. Here were eleven songs that were warm, friendly and full of personality; a lovely encounter. Eleven finely honed and arranged songs, with the sparsest of accompaniment and all the more beautiful for that!

(side note: I also casually bumped into Brendan Murphy on a Dublin London flight the very week in March 1993 that She Hits Me was in the Uk Top 40. We travelled into London on the Underground and I got a lovely guest list for their show that night at the Subterranean!)

 

THE HEAD AND THE HEART - LIVING MIRAGE

Five years ago in the Calvin College Sports Centre, The Head and the Heart wowed me and I fell in love with their melodies, harmonies and poetry. I ate up their first two records, the eponymous debut and the follow up Let’s Be Still. I don’t think they weren’t trying to be spiritual but they were to me.

Signs Of Light was the first record they released with me as a fan. I was eager for it and though I wouldn’t say that it was a bad record it didn’t live up to the first two. There was something too major label, too contrived for sales about it.

Living Mirage hits the spot again. It has enough dollops of their more organic first two records to blend more perfectly with the more commercial rhythms and beats of Signs of Light. They get it just right this time.

The tinkling piano underpin of Saving Grace. The downbeat People Need A Melody with the shifting lead voices. The whistle and strum start to the closing lo-fi Glory of Music.

The Head and the Heart’s strength is their unique melodies, original without going quirky, and the layered harmonies that soar in the most organic of ways. On this fourth record they bring all of that to the pop driven shiny beats of See You Through My Eyes, Missed Connection Honeybee and Running Through Hell effortlessly. I Found Love is the perfect blend.

I Found Love might also be the lyrical mission statement:

 

I found out

It's not the love that's in your mind

It's the love that you might find

 

With best west coast philosophy The Head and the Heart is looking for a love as authentic as the music. In the world we are currently living in it might be our Saving Grace along with music (People Need A Melody and Glory of Music). 

In the end they almost confess to be the modern version of Fleetwood Mac by sneaking the word Mirage in to the album title. The musical intrigue of a Lindsay Buckingham and the multiple vocalists make for a good argument. It has the sunny day soundtrack feel of Rumours or Tango In The Night for sure. Maybe in the end, their strongest album to date!

File under West Coast Pop/Rock Glorious!

JOSH RITTER - FEVER BREAKS

Josh Ritter and Jason Isbell!? What a tasty collaboration. At least that is what I thought when I first read it. What if though? Could Isbell clog Ritter sweet songs up with dirty American riffs?

Overall no! Isbell does give a weightier guitar girth to Ritter’s sound. The night I discovered Ritter, back in 2001 he was supporting The Frames, he was all Steve Forbert lightness of touch. 

Ritter’s arrangements and instrumentation have increased over the two decades since but Isbell brings even more noise for the buck. This is much more Tom Petty with Isbell’s 400 Units as Heartbreakers and even on Losing Battle Neil Young with Isbell’s 400 Units as Crazy Horse.

There’s always been a Dylan influence in the Ritter DNA and here we get lots of different Dylan eras but Amanda Shires fiddle adds what Scarlet Rivera gave to Desire. 

In the end though the whole thing works. The songs and the playing are too good to get lost under the potential weaknesses.

Ritter’s tunes and melodies are instantaneous and unique to his own rhythmic persona. They drive and soar and float through you. Losing Battles drives, Old Black Magic soars and All Some Kind Of Dream floats.

Ritter’s lyrics are as wordy and clever as ever but it’s the reach of subject matter that is most impressive.

There are two cold blooded murder ballads in what are the opening tracks to both side of the vinyl; Ground Don't Want Me and Silverblade. There’s social and political commentary on, perhaps in the end too wordy, Torch Committee and the more poetically subtle but accurately pointed All Some Kind Of Dream. There’s politics of the heart too in the beautiful I Still Love You (Now and Then).

Most intriguing for me with my spiritual interests are the final three songs.

Losing Battles seems to recognise the weakness within us all to do the good we’d like to do:

 

“Try to do the things I should

Most times its a losing battle”

 

Ritter intriguingly follows that confession with A New Man:

 

In every strangers face, a place of welcome

No matter who you are or where you came from

You won't walk among the dead a moment longer

You won't belong there

 

You will be a new man

You will be a new man

You will be a new man

Change

 

Preach it Josh and then take us home Blazing Highway Home, an addition to that ever increasing number of prayers in the rock music catalogue:

 

Still St. Peter, you don't want to wait

Throw it in gear and roll on through those gates

And know no matter where your soul may roam

That you'll find yourself a blazing highway home

 

Ritter with Isbell at the throttle is a musically intoxicating brew. Definitely worth the experiment that will hopefully open Ritter’s audience up wider. The utter quality of his songs deserves that!

VAN MORRISON - THE HEALING GAME (Deluxe Edition)

Oh what a Van-fast! In this 3 Cd digipack CD box there is a treasure-trove of goodies.

It is the kind of thing that I would be up to with my Playlist series. On the back of the original The Healing Game, which has not been remastered, we get the B-sides of singles from the time. Then we have CD 2 which is a collage of songs from The Healing Game project and various other projects from the era.

So, if unlike me you haven’t already, you don’t need to hoke out - CD singles, Sult, Good Rocking Tonight and The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers, John Lee Hooker’s Don’t Look Back and Lonnie Donegan’s Muleskinner Blues - because the Van tracks from them are here. 

On CD two there are three collaborations that bring some fantastic tunes. I’ve been particularly loving the rocking rhythm and blues of his five songs with Carl Perkins. Four of these have been previously unreleased and one of those My Angel is a co-write. This second disc has ten previously unissued songs including a Morrison original Didn’t He Ramble and A Kiss To Build A Dream On made famous by Louis Armstrong in 1951.

There is more! The third disc is an absolutely pumping live show from Montreux in July 1997. Just a few months after the release of The Healing Game the set list has seven songs from the record. This is the Morrison’s few years with Brian Kennedy bringing backing vocals. Kennedy’s singing added grace notes indeed. That high end voice gets close to angelic and when he and Morrison play off each other like a call and response, it is climactic and electric. 

So, as I say, a treasure trove! In the end though, what the three discs did for me was highlight the strength of The Healing Game in Morrison’s phenomenal body of work. There are six varied versions of the title track here, three versions of Fire In The Belly and Sometimes We Cry. What these versions did was throw different hues across them and the entire album. It rose up my favourite Morrison records list for sure.

Then… and maybe contrived but… these dongs were recorded between the Northern Ireland ceasefires and the Good Friday Agreement. So when I hear: -

 

Don't look back

To the days of yester-year

You cannot live on in the past

Don't look back

 

An' I've known so many people

They're still tryin' to live on in the past

Don't look back

(Don’t Look Back - John Lee Hooker)

 

and

 

Here I am again

Back on the corner again

Back where I belong

Where I've always been

Everything the same

It don't ever change

I'm back on the corner again

In the healing game

(The Healing Game)

 

Morrison used yet another acoustic version of The Healing Game on a fundraising album Across The Bridge Of Hope for the victims of the 1998 Omagh bomb. Morrison always said it was a song from America, doo-wop singing on street corners. Healing is a spiritual thing here and Van was intrigued by it - The Healing Has Begun and Did Ye Get Healed just two other songs on the theme! It’s hard as you listen to some of these versions to not see those corners as the streets pf East Belfast where, whatever his geographical place, Van Morrison always seems close to. 

We are still needing that Healing on his Belfast streets in 2019!

LUKE SITAL-SINGH - A GOLDEN STATE

Luke Sital-Singh’s recent EP gave a few hints to the man and his new location. His covers of Jackson Browne’s Late For The Sky, Graham Nash’s Just A Song Before I Go and Neil Young’s Harvest Moon and Big Star’s Thirteen could have been recorded in Laurel Canyon circa 1970. He shared how driving down the Californian coastline inspired the EP.

Going the full hog, young Luke has now settled in LA with his wife and A Golden State declares right on the front cover his west coast record. There is an early 70s gentleness and sparseness here. Jackson Browne is a good reference. 

It is a warm and intimate listen. There’s a drum beat or a symbol bang here and there but these perfectly crafted songs sit on top of the lightest guitar or piano touches. Silhouette is the only song that runs away with itself. 

Sital-Singh uses the highest part of his vocal range a lot of the time. He used to write with Iain Archer and it is it’s Archer’s voice, not his co-writing or production that has followed Sital-Singh to America. Both my wife and my daughters thought it was the long awaited new Iain Archer album when they heard it… and they are Sital-Singh fans! It has less drama than previous albums. It utterly beautiful throughout.

The songs. I imagine that is the point for Luke. They are about California though not in the Beach Boy’s sense. It is not so much the geography as the relocation that seeps to the top of the content’s intent. These are songs about a couple very much in love, their love is still young and blooming. Yet, they have taken themselves somewhere new and feeling the vulnerability of unfamiliar things. They need each other in that vulnerability. 

 

On Almost Gone:

 

Heavy air, glistening, deep dark listening

Falling's unavoidable to get away from where you've been

I think I have a song, there's a line in it for you to sing

Would you sing it for me?

 

On I Do:

 

I’m cynical of heaven now, but you make me believe

I love the music and the grace in which you move

I love the rhythms that you choose

And the melody of how you said, "I do"

 

We are back to Jackson Browne’s early 70s introspection. You can hear a few of these songs sitting snuggly on Late For The Sky. Particularly for me The Last Day a poetic imagining of the last day of someone’s life. It is an astonishing song for one so young. The inevitability of mortality, acknowledgement of final separation and asks all the questions we should ask in advance. Have we loved enough, lived enough and thanked people we need to thank in time? The song takes us right through the last day and ends with that need of one another again:

 

But I'd hold you close and you'd pray and pray

Whisper everything was gonna be okay

Our final kiss would bring such bliss

And feel just like our first

 

There are many lessons from the melodic exercise as the closing lines conclude:

 

On the last night of my life

Think I'd rather be surprised

Now every night when I close my eyes

I hold your hand so tight

 

These words and rhymes and ideas delivered so tender and touchingly in the purity of Luke Sital-Singh’s voice. Oh, it’s good. Then, just when I think I love it, I listen again and hear more memorable lines and compassionate ideas that I have missed before. 

Good move sir. It’s been a very good move!

PAUL WELLER - OTHER ASPECTS; PAUL WELLER LIVE AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL

I remember driving Rich Mullins across a few States in America. We had spent some of our time together listening to rough mixes of the soon to released A Liturgy, A Legacy & a Ragamuffin Band. We loved the rawer sound. The strings had not been added yet. When we left Rich to go our separate ways my last words were, “No strings Rich. No strings.” The final mix had strings! 

I remember as a University student turning up The Jam’s Setting Sons and Sound Affects to loud and loving the new wave thud of a three piece rock band at its edgiest best. 

So here I am 26 years after that car journey, nearly 40 after The Jam rocked my world and I am listening to Paul Weller with strings… and brass! Have I gone soft… or matured in my taste to declare that I love it!

Weller’s most recent studio record True Meanings really caught my ear. I loved its near gentle craft. Songs like Gravity set Weller alongside Bacharach et al. Even better the orchestral parts on that record and all over this live album were arranged by a Northern Irish woman Hannah Peel. 

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall just as critical success was declared over True Meanings it is understandable that the set list concentrates on the songs from that acoustically shaped record. The rest of the set list stayed away from the hits. 

Yes, it would have been wrong to leave out Have You Ever Had It Blue and You Do Something To Me for this kind of reworking, the string on the latter are particularly exquisite, but The Jam picks are Private Hell, Boy About Town and the b-side, brilliant and all as it was Tales From The Riverbank. The solo Wildwood is just gorgeous in this setting. 

it all works beautifully. It’s another musical chapter in Weller’s constant sonic shifts. I imagine that his next work will be loud and experimental but I could take a longer phase of this style for sure. If Fitzroy ever do a Gospel According To… Paul Weller then you can be sure that May Love Travel With You will be up front and centre. It’s the most spiritual of benedictions to this concert set:

 

Have grace to see the virtues

Give thanks to them sometimes

And may love travel with you

Forever and all time

 

Amen!

JONI 75

I love Joni Mitchell and I have shared on Soul Surmise before that I love Tribute albums. I am always posting playlists of covers of artists. Even better is when the album is from a Live Tribute concert! So, Joni 75 is a beautiful thing! I had heard about the gig, then that it would be released as an album and I waited patiently for release. I was not disappointed though for me not every song works. 

Joni Mitchell’s catalogue of work over 50 years is as strong as anyone else in the genre. Of course those 50 years covered a range of sounds. When it comes to songs that can be covered it seems that the earlier ones have always been the most popular. I don’t think that is to do with the quality of the song so much as the intricate arrangements of the later work. 

So with Joni 75. Though Emmylou Harris does Magdalene Laundries from 1994’s Turbulent Indigo, that song was written 27 years after the next youngest song Dreamland from 1977’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. It is no surprise and a delight for me that four of the songs are from 1971’s seminal Blue. My other favourite record Hejira gets two cuts, Amelia and Coyote.

Coyote is of particular intrigue to me. It might be one of the first Mitchell songs I ever heard, her version on The Band’s Last Waltz, and the singer is Dublin’s Glen Hansard. 

Amelia is done by Diana Krall whose previous covers of A Case Of You and Black Crow are particular favourites of mine. I do wish she had done A Case Of You here. I have blogged elsewhere that that might be the best song ever written and Kris Kristofferson, even with the help of Brandi Carlile doesn’t quite eek out its poetry or emotion. 

Noah Jones who worked with Herbie Hancock on his fascinating project River: The Joni Letters sings the same song Court and Spark, James Taylor does River and Woodstock, Rufus Wainwright gives us All I Want and Blue and perhaps the very best vocal of all is Seal's Both Sides Now.

Thrown into the mix of all these Mitchell classics is Graham Nash. Nash does not do a Joni Mitchell song at all but his own Our House which was written in the Laurel Canyon home that Nash shared with Mitchell when they were a couple. It is a beautiful song of domestic bliss and sits perfectly in a concert set list of Joni Mitchell classics both in style and indeed quality.

Songs might actually be as good as the versions of them that other artists do. If that is the case then once again it is clear that Joni Mitchell is one of the all-time greats!

my playlist of my other favourite Joni Mitchell covers here