Clayhill - Clayhill

Track List:

1. Figure Of Eight
2. Northern Soul
3. Mystery Train
4. Face Of The Sun
5. Grasscutter
6. Funny How
7. Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
8. Disscordents

Running time: 36 minutes
Released: 2005

And so I come to a draft that has been sat around for a couple of years.

This post almost appeared titled incorrectly as "Acoustic", for that is how it lived in my library for too long. In sourcing the track list and image I realised my error and re-titled it appropriately so that it can appear in the right place at the right time. It is an acoustic album and "Acoustic" is often added to the name in references, it would seem. Oh well, correction made.

Clayhill are made up of bassist Ali Friend (of Red Snapper and The Imagined Village), vocalist Gavin Clark (Sunhouse, UNKLE) and Ted Barnes (who did work with Beth Orton, as well as solo). Friend's name may have been enough to get me to look them up, but I think I cottoned on to them via Red Snapper's Redone - an album of remixes and a notable cover of Odd Man Out. It isn't credited as Clayhill, but it is Friend, and Clark for sure; not sure about Barnes. The latter's voice was stunning and I was hooked.

This is the first midweek listen I have managed in I don't know how long, and I am able to fit it in only because I bailed on a roleplaying session after three really bad nights of sleep. I am far too busy to find time for everything I have to do and everything I want to do, and getting the rest and recuperation I need to function. Oh well; the late Gavin Clark delivers a soft, almost apologetic song over a simple guitar hook supported by Friend's upright bass. Figure of Eight is a tune based on simplicity for the most part. The trio play off each other well. The bass is subtle and fills in the gaps behind the guitar, which is plucky and bright as it slides under the nasal, drawn out tones of our vocalist. 

As much as I like Figure of Eight, there are two tracks on this album I really adore. The first is Northern Soul - though I am more familiar with the original recording on Small Circle, it is impressive how well the sound transfers to the striped back version here. This song has a punchier hook, a twangier bass, a firmer vocal and a chorus that strikes a chord even though I am a softy southerner not a hardy northern type. The little fussy, busy bits of guitar work are a joy and I imagine they had great fun recording this track - it has that kind of positive energetic style coming through the speaker. The other song that matches this is their cover of The Smiths' Please Please Please... (The Smiths, for disclosure, are not a band I have in my library - though like every human being alive I have a soft spot for the guitar on This Charming Man).

Ali Friend is a musical chameleon - a running thread through disparate groups in my collection, popping up backing people unexpectedly. I love his bass work. Videos of live sets and tracks from Red Snapper burned that love into me a long time ago and it has never left. The sorrowful twang that he gets onto some of his notes here is gorgeous and dovetails nicely with the hurt that Clark injects into his long vowels.

This is exactly the type of low-key music I need on a night like this. I go on holiday in a week, but I have a ton of stuff to wrap up before then... and my ability to do so may well depend on how well I can relax and find sleep this evening. Anything that helps me drift into a loose state is good, and there is a nice laziness to Clayhill's music that helps the mood. It's not chill out fare really, but the tones are low and soothing. The vocal is often challenging and emotional but it is the frequency of the instruments that I find cathartic - mostly the bass, but the guitar doesn't wander off too much either.

I am not that keen on Grasscutter, possibly because it features on three of the 4 Clayhill albums I have and as such it comes up more often than it should. It also devolves into repetition too much for my liking. I think I might trim this version. We then hit the final trio - songs which do not appear on the other Clayhill discs. Funny How doesn't ring any bells for me until Clark hits the chorus and then it finds familiarity. I really like the interplay here, but above all it is the tone - pleading yet wronged, defiant yet downcast. I find little contrasts like that throughout the song, which is a nice touch in my book, and makes up for the fact it sits between me and the heartbreak of Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want.

Slow, deliberate, nail through the hand hurt. Every note and word here is pitched for maximum emotional impact. As someone who has gone through periods of depression in the past where it felt nothing was going my way the song resonates. As alluded to above I am not really familiar with the original, but this is frankly so good that I don't feel the need to be. Here - I am feeling like sharing the love:

The final track is always going to be a bit of a come-down after that. It is a slow, slow number. Very sparse, drawn out words. I like it, but I miss most of it as I got distracted by a work email, just as the US working day is closing. Oh well (I seem to say that a lot).

Beautiful Skeletons - Gavin Clark

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.