The Church with One Bell - John Martyn

Track list:

1. He's Got All the Whiskey
2. God's Song
3. How Fortunate the Man with None
4. Small Town Talk
5. Excuse Me Mister
6. Strange Fruit
7. The Sky Is Crying
8. Glory Box
9. Feel So Bad
10. Death Don't Have Mercy
11. How Fortunate the Man with None (Original Version)

Running time: 47 minutes
Released: 1998

This album contains one of my favourite cover songs of all time. Martyn's take on Portishead's Glory Box is inspired. I don't have that much of Martyn's back catalog - just this, Solid Air, and his debut, London Conversation. I'm not quite sure why I have such spotty coverage but there we go. Time to see what the rest of this covers album is made of.

I don't actually recgonise any of the songs here besides Glory Box for their titles, or the listing of composers in the track metadata, so it is a bit of a voyage into the unknown in that sense. The opening number is a smoothly grooved track, with Martyn's sometimes gruff voice is applied in a hushed and softened manner. The tune is not revolutionary, the lyrics not great, but the overall vibe is much more positive. Mood is a massive thing in music and where Diagrams managed to butcher the mood on Chromatics with some very bland arrangements, here the tunes maybe simple but they hit the nail on the head, and support the central draw, our star's vocal.

There is a lot to be said for execution; the band here do just that. It could just be that I am in a more positive mood today, though.

Things get a bit weirder on How Fortunate the Man with None (which appears again at the end of the disc; apparently originally a secret track, my copy - digital purchase, I think - has it credited natively). There is a shift to the main structure of the piece, losing the easy, bluesy nature of the first couple in favour of a busier sound. Electronics creeping in to form a rather off-putting loop. I say off-putting because it rather dominates the tune, and frankly its not an interesting hook. There is some decent drumming around it, but Martyn's voice is subsumed into this underwhelming, synthetic sound, killing the majesty some. Thankfully it seems to be a one-track experiment.

Martyn had great resonance, a full sound, magnetic and with a natural depth to it creating a warm sound. His voice sits so well with slow, sparse, bassy tracks. Together this creates a comfort blanket in aural form, wrapping me up and captivating my ears. This is a laid back album for the most part, a late night album in some ways; it's early afternoon now but the sheer cool of the man, his band and their source material succeed in slowing things right down. I probably need more John Martyn records.

Strange Fruit switches things up a little, opening with a sedate piano melody that lasts 80 seconds before the vocal joins in. There is a touch of percussion in there too but this track is sparse. I love the slow tempo, the vocal becoming a drawl on the low notes; it drips atmosphere and reminds me a little of Tom Waits, only more welcoming. Martyn is a better singer, his voice smoother than Waits' I think, though I would be hard pressed to say which I prefer. The slow pace is a feature of a number of tracks here, but its effect is variable. I find it less endearing on The Sky is Crying, for example.

Musically, Glory Box is a faithful cover, upright bass taking on the riff with aplomb, but the real standout is the soulful way Martyn delivers the lyrics. He turns the track - always a downtempo classic - into a blues masterpiece. There is so much character in his low, meandering take - pretty sure he injects some new lines in places - that it really is magnetic. I have always loved the original track; covers are often difficult in that situation, but this one nails the aesthetic of the track so perfectly, whilst migrating it genre-wise. I put it easily alongside Portishead's version as an equal, if not a slight improvement on it.

Feel So Bad gets an injection of life; a livelier riff - and a better use of electronica than we heard earlier - switch up the overall tone, which the tune probably needed not to pale in comparison with what came before. The quicker, louder nature of the song cleanses the palette and so obviously distances itself from Glory Box that it doesn't suffer. It is a palette cleanser, too; the slow, low sound returns after one track away. I think this is album craft, a dying skill in the day of streaming and downloads. Death Don't Have Mercy gets to return to the style used to smash earlier efforts out of the park and still stand up brilliantly because we were pulled out of our soulful reverie for a short time.

Ah, now. The "original version" (metadata tag line, not mine) of How Fortunate the Man with None that I close on... this is much more accessible, more enjoyable than the credited version. This has life, soul and more organic sound. This has a clearer vocal, no dubious electronics and a groovier bass and drums. This is good, good enough for me to ditch track 3 and be happy to lose it. Everything else? Everything else is staying because everything else is pretty darn great.

Blue Lines - Massive Attack

Track list:

1. Safe From Harm
2. One Love
3. Blue Lines
4. Be Thankful For What You've Got
5. Five Man Army
6. Unfinished Sympathy
7. Daydreaming
8. Lately
9. Hymn Of The Big Wheel

Running time: 45 minutes
Released: 1991

Ten years ago this would definitely have been tagged as a favourite. Now I'm not so certain. I pretty much guarantee I'll love it, but it isn't a disc I return to often. I have the original, not the remastered version and I think that I got into this through my brother - not unusual way back when; though he is younger than me he bought more music than I when we were in our teens. To think this is almost 25 years old now... its a true classic, but how does it listen this much later?

Two full albums in a day... I could be listening to this year's Mercury winner (which I need to do some point soon having picked it up, and it being an A), but the only reason I am doing this post now is that I want to hear these tunes.

The bass riff that forms the structure of Safe From Harm is iconic, Shara Nelson's vocal is amazing. Talk about setting a tone in the first 30 seconds. The periphery of the bass is incidental. There's stuff there but that riff is so strong. I have the disc of the samples that inspired Massive Attack somewhere in the future so that I can appreciate the source but there is no doubt at all that this stands as a shining example of how to sample and enhance. At 5 minutes the track feels short, compared with the tunes I listened to earlier which overstayed their welcome. I really should tag this "favourites" after all so I have. It only took 10 seconds to convince me.

Horace Andy appears for the first time on One Love. It never ceases to amaze me how many Massive Attack tunes are made or broken by this man. Either by the application of his vocal, or by virtue of being re-imaginings of songs from his past. There is a cool menace in the track here, and that combination of words is not a natural one. It's funny what the slightly tipsy brain will produce. In addition to wanting, and indulging, to listen to this now, I have a) just watched ep. 3 of London Spy - some very nice scenes - and seen trails for Luther and Line of Duty, two shows I am very pleased will reappear on screen soon. It's been a good evening in that regard.

Blue Lines sees us exposed to early Tricky for the first time, less angry here than on his own stuff. The interplay between the vocalists is nice, backed by a very chilled rhythm. Its a style that is really hard to deliver well - there is almost nothing to it in places. Many imitators since have failed to pull off the heady blend... just recently I branded Abraham lazy and faddish for their light-touch downbeat electronica. This is how to achieve that chillout goal whilst still being engaging. Do it first.

The sweet transition into Be Thankful for What You've Got is a magical moment. It's born from a pointed end to Blue Lines, and the immediate uptake of a rhythm so funky its not funny. Like much of the work that covers Horace Andy, this is not sample so much as cover, which I had never really appreciated. The original is on Protected so I'll compare and contrast in, I dunno, a decade? I am sure I've said on these pages before that I went to uni in Bristol, and in my first year there, after Massive Attack released Mezzanine I stayed late in the run-up to Christmas to see these guys play the Student Union. It remains a fond, if faded, memory. Later, when I was studying in Bath, I used to travel over to Bristol every week to game. On my way from station to location I walked through the parts of the city that spawned the Bristol Sound, and in that way you do, you think you see local celebs from time to time. Don't know if I ever really did though. Thought I saw Beth Gibbons of Portishead in a sandwich shop once too. Hah.

Five Man army comes and goes, a nice groove but really just a fill-in before the undoubted high point of Unfinished Sympathy. This really is a modern classic, a truly iconic tune in more ways than one. I get goose pimples as it starts, that off-kilter tapping, not quite tuneful bells and the sampled "hey hey hey hey". It is the start of the strings and the vocal that really set things moving though. Nelson's voice creams it, soulful and yearning, the strings speaking to loss. There is one moment at 2:24, when the piano comes in for a quick bridge that I always loved. It has less impact now, perhaps because I was so anticipating it. It's amazing the interplay between the percussion, which is tense and snappy, and the tune which is laid back and easy. They bottled something and released it here. 

Daydreaming has never really worked for me - as a concept or a song. The backing track just doesn't quite do it for me. Here the rhythm of it gets overpowering, a loop too far in terms of its impact on the experience for me... its very easy to get sucked into that beat pattern and miss everything else, which is what happened to me just now. Lately changed it up and I suddenly snapped out of a wander. This has the same problem of an over-bearing central hook, but manages it better through strings and another Nelson vocal which follows the pattern of the rhythm in an interesting way.

The album ends with another high point. The Hymn of the Big Wheel is just a gorgeous little rhythm behind a very simple tune, but it owes all of its magic to Horace Andy's vocal. Man, I love the way he sings this. All love, released; free. In truth, re-tagging it as a favourite is probably a bit of a push. There are to my mind four stand out songs on this disc: Safe From Harm, Be Thankful... Unfinished Sympathy and this. It's less than half of the album, but these tunes are timelessly good and elevate an enjoyable if somewhat surpassed effort to something that few discs can really claim to match: genre definition.