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| Track list: 1. Crazy 2. Spinning Round the Sun 3. Hurricane 4. Black Blood 5. Crazy On the Weekend 6. Elaine's Place 7. Never Came for Us 8. Spotlight for Sunshine 9. Stems 10. The Russian 11. Calling in the Cards 12. The Years Have Loved Us 13. When We Had Faces 14. Painted Glass 15. Raise a Vein 16. Open & Shut Case 17. Low Are the Punches 18. Never Seen the Sea 19. The Lost Choices 20. Roll Away Remain 21. Bermondsey Stutter 22. I Dreamt of God Running time: 76 minutes Released: 2014 |
So my next post was supposed to be Clayhill, which will now come next. In setting that post up I found out two things. One, that Gavin Clark had passed away 2 years ago and two, that he left this album behind when he did, so I bought it.
This is a first listen, a first listen in 3 weeks of ridiculous busy life, and a rather unknown quantity. It might have been done sooner had it not been quite so long, but still.
Crazy sounds like it must have been very early in his career. Clark's voice doesn't have the refined edge, or depth, to it that characterised the vocal that I am familiar with. The song is rather bland for it, too, but it short and past quickly. The next track is, like the first, a simple acoustic guitar tune with Clark's vocal. I recognise the song, from Sunhouse's Crazy on the Weekend. There are a couple more here from that album, too - no surprise since Gavin Clark was the vocalist. I don't remember the tune, despite recognising it - but I suspect that the Sunhouse version has more to recommend it - a greater depth of sound, and a more mature vocal performance.
Ah, there. Hurricane (also a Sunhouse track) finally exhibits Clark's voice with the distinctions that endeared him to me on a cover of Red Snapper's Odd Man Out with his Clayhill bandmates. This tune I really like. It is also a simple number, but there is a harmonica or something in there too, giving a bit more of a layered sound. The three elements combine well and it slips by nicely. It is a dreamy number in some ways, more reminiscent of summer days than hurricane winds.
Gavin Clark falls into a sizable bucket of charismatic but flawed singers that I like. Character of voice is sometimes more powerful than pitch perfection. There is a gravelly note to it, a fag-burned, whisky soaked rawness and authenticity. A plaintive tone, a vulnerability dressed up in manliness. A warmth, a reality. When a voice like this is on song... ugh, train of thought broken by horrible overdrive and feedback screech on an electric guitar. Once I adjust to the screechy sound it's not so bad, but it stood out a mile from what went before and what comes immediately after. Not a nice surprise sound at all.
We hit a run of very short tracks - as in sub-2 minutes. I tend to find short tunes distracting... not enough time to get into them or have them really tell their tale. That said short and focused can really work. Here the tunes rather drift by - nothing particularly standing out. I find myself wondering about the whys and wherefores of these recordings. Clearly some are early demos of tunes cut later with bands, but even after I heard his voice and knew who he was, Clark had no profile as a solo artist that I was aware of - more as a voice for hire - e.g. with UNKLE.
The overall theme here seems to be confessional, almost apologetic. The soft meandering guitar work, the slow and deliberate vocals. Black Blood, with its harsh electrics feels like a massive curveball given the context of the rest thus far.
Ooh, there is bit more depth and life again in The Russian. A plinky-plonky nature to the sound gives it both a hint of the Old West and a breath of new life. This time the tonal shift works because it is not a complete change of instrument - it is still very much an acoustic string-lead piece, just with the additional backing of a keyboard. Clark gives it some solemnity over the top of a simple enough but lively tune, and I find the overall effect quite enjoyable. My general opinion on this collection is that it is so-so, however my affinity for Clark's voice is such that he can elevate some frankly underwhelming songs to enjoyable pass-times. He didn't have the songwriting chops of a Tom Waits, the croon of a Terry Callier, but he had heart, soul and sincerity which go quite a long way.
I find myself without many thoughts worth sharing. Too much is either a repetition of something said above or without relevance to the tunes at hand. I would happily digress but those thoughts are rather... dull and typing anything at all pulls me out of the stupour, the gentle state of relaxation that I am finding myself collapsing in to. It is good to have got to this at last, for it is the low-key evening that I needed, yet still productive.
There is no pace to the tracks, they all seem to be sedate numbers. Lazy reverie. The pace of the album as a whole is odd - shaken up not by changes to pace or tone of the tracks (Black Blood and The Russian as notable exceptions here - for worse and better), but by the variable lengths. This last quarter of the collection looks likely to be the most samey as everything here is ~3.30 or more. To be clear I don't mind this. The gentle pace fits quite well with how I am feeling, the end of the middle day of a long weekend. I seriously doubt I would ever choose these tracks as my poison for any given scenario, but I have to say that I am enjoying not taking it too seriously, kicking back and letting it wash over me. The familiarity of Clark's voice allows for that.
Never Seen the Sea is familiar, too; it was on the soundtrack to This is England (director Shane Meadows knew Clark well) - a series I never watched, but I have the soundtrack to all the same. This track has more depth to it. It is a shame that more here doesn't have that to be honest. Clark is generally good to listen to, but a good vocal still benefits from a good crucible. I find myself checking what is left to run because The Lost Choices sounded so much like a closer, but there are a few more to go yet. There is a tiredness creeping in to Clark's delivery it seems to me... but maybe I am projecting that. A definite sad tinge to the pieces though.
Listening to dead musicians is a weird thing. It is one thing if they died before I heard them, but it feels quite different listening to those that have died since I discovered them. That goes double for those that die young. It doesn't really feel like I'm listening to a ghost, but it does rather make one think of one's own mortality. That eerie feeling is intensified on the final track, with it's title and lyrics of dreaming of God. I'm not religious at all so the thought of reaching out to something beyond the real applies to deities and spectres in equal measure.
Then all is quiet.
This is a first listen, a first listen in 3 weeks of ridiculous busy life, and a rather unknown quantity. It might have been done sooner had it not been quite so long, but still.
Crazy sounds like it must have been very early in his career. Clark's voice doesn't have the refined edge, or depth, to it that characterised the vocal that I am familiar with. The song is rather bland for it, too, but it short and past quickly. The next track is, like the first, a simple acoustic guitar tune with Clark's vocal. I recognise the song, from Sunhouse's Crazy on the Weekend. There are a couple more here from that album, too - no surprise since Gavin Clark was the vocalist. I don't remember the tune, despite recognising it - but I suspect that the Sunhouse version has more to recommend it - a greater depth of sound, and a more mature vocal performance.
Ah, there. Hurricane (also a Sunhouse track) finally exhibits Clark's voice with the distinctions that endeared him to me on a cover of Red Snapper's Odd Man Out with his Clayhill bandmates. This tune I really like. It is also a simple number, but there is a harmonica or something in there too, giving a bit more of a layered sound. The three elements combine well and it slips by nicely. It is a dreamy number in some ways, more reminiscent of summer days than hurricane winds.
Gavin Clark falls into a sizable bucket of charismatic but flawed singers that I like. Character of voice is sometimes more powerful than pitch perfection. There is a gravelly note to it, a fag-burned, whisky soaked rawness and authenticity. A plaintive tone, a vulnerability dressed up in manliness. A warmth, a reality. When a voice like this is on song... ugh, train of thought broken by horrible overdrive and feedback screech on an electric guitar. Once I adjust to the screechy sound it's not so bad, but it stood out a mile from what went before and what comes immediately after. Not a nice surprise sound at all.
We hit a run of very short tracks - as in sub-2 minutes. I tend to find short tunes distracting... not enough time to get into them or have them really tell their tale. That said short and focused can really work. Here the tunes rather drift by - nothing particularly standing out. I find myself wondering about the whys and wherefores of these recordings. Clearly some are early demos of tunes cut later with bands, but even after I heard his voice and knew who he was, Clark had no profile as a solo artist that I was aware of - more as a voice for hire - e.g. with UNKLE.
The overall theme here seems to be confessional, almost apologetic. The soft meandering guitar work, the slow and deliberate vocals. Black Blood, with its harsh electrics feels like a massive curveball given the context of the rest thus far.
Ooh, there is bit more depth and life again in The Russian. A plinky-plonky nature to the sound gives it both a hint of the Old West and a breath of new life. This time the tonal shift works because it is not a complete change of instrument - it is still very much an acoustic string-lead piece, just with the additional backing of a keyboard. Clark gives it some solemnity over the top of a simple enough but lively tune, and I find the overall effect quite enjoyable. My general opinion on this collection is that it is so-so, however my affinity for Clark's voice is such that he can elevate some frankly underwhelming songs to enjoyable pass-times. He didn't have the songwriting chops of a Tom Waits, the croon of a Terry Callier, but he had heart, soul and sincerity which go quite a long way.
I find myself without many thoughts worth sharing. Too much is either a repetition of something said above or without relevance to the tunes at hand. I would happily digress but those thoughts are rather... dull and typing anything at all pulls me out of the stupour, the gentle state of relaxation that I am finding myself collapsing in to. It is good to have got to this at last, for it is the low-key evening that I needed, yet still productive.
There is no pace to the tracks, they all seem to be sedate numbers. Lazy reverie. The pace of the album as a whole is odd - shaken up not by changes to pace or tone of the tracks (Black Blood and The Russian as notable exceptions here - for worse and better), but by the variable lengths. This last quarter of the collection looks likely to be the most samey as everything here is ~3.30 or more. To be clear I don't mind this. The gentle pace fits quite well with how I am feeling, the end of the middle day of a long weekend. I seriously doubt I would ever choose these tracks as my poison for any given scenario, but I have to say that I am enjoying not taking it too seriously, kicking back and letting it wash over me. The familiarity of Clark's voice allows for that.
Never Seen the Sea is familiar, too; it was on the soundtrack to This is England (director Shane Meadows knew Clark well) - a series I never watched, but I have the soundtrack to all the same. This track has more depth to it. It is a shame that more here doesn't have that to be honest. Clark is generally good to listen to, but a good vocal still benefits from a good crucible. I find myself checking what is left to run because The Lost Choices sounded so much like a closer, but there are a few more to go yet. There is a tiredness creeping in to Clark's delivery it seems to me... but maybe I am projecting that. A definite sad tinge to the pieces though.
Listening to dead musicians is a weird thing. It is one thing if they died before I heard them, but it feels quite different listening to those that have died since I discovered them. That goes double for those that die young. It doesn't really feel like I'm listening to a ghost, but it does rather make one think of one's own mortality. That eerie feeling is intensified on the final track, with it's title and lyrics of dreaming of God. I'm not religious at all so the thought of reaching out to something beyond the real applies to deities and spectres in equal measure.
Then all is quiet.
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