The Alphabet of Hurricanes - Tom McRae

Track List:

1. Still Love You
2. A is For
3. Won't Lie
4. Summer of John Wayne
5. Told My Troubles To The River
6. American Spirit
7. Please
8. Out of the Walls
9. Me & Stetson
10. Can't Find You
11. Best Winter
12. Fifteen Miles Downriver

Running time: 41 minutes
Released: 2010

Another McRae album that I probably should not have bought, so soon on the heels of All Maps Welcome. I am hoping, rather than expecting, this to contain at least the odd gem to vindicate the (long ago) purchase.

Staccato mandolin kicks the album off with a reasonable roll to the playing, but the rest of Still Love You is pretty boringly put together. Individual elements are nice but the construction is lacking. It is followed by a horrid interlude that really just does not work for anything but putting the listener on edge.

I will say this for Tom McRae: he has evolved between albums, at least in some respects. This is not simply an inferior version of an earlier release, there has been a shift in the arrangements even as the vocal echoes back to his debut in its strained pleading (and although that sounds bad, I actually like that vocal affectation). My problem with this is that the bit I like about Won't Lie (for example) is drowned out by the changes that do not work for me. Addition of piercing woodwind gives a fuller sound, but not one I welcome.

The addition of deeper arrangements does not always make for better music, just as it does not always make things work badly. My personal feeling is that McRae's voice has more room to do what he does well with a flatter backing. Not a featureless one, but one without folds in which to hide the pained delivery that gives his vocal an identifiable character. Summer of John Wayne starts as though it might be up my street, and I find some of the passages in this song really quite pleasant, but when the arrangement inflates and envelops I find it dropping from my interest like a stone.

Ah, now that is a more promising sound... interesting percussion and loose keys. A significant departure in direction, and to my ear the backing is too high, the vocal too low, but a genuinely different track, and short enough for the cacophony to start the ears ringing but not leave them so. This is a good form of evolution, experimentation. I think it works, but it is on a fine line that will probably not have made Told My Troubles to the River a favourite to many.

I like the way this album shifts in tone, it is far from homogeneous. Most of the tunes are not really tripping my "ooh I like this" sense and I will be cutting many, but I do want to shout out to the roundedness of this release and the progression it marks in the performer. There are themes and elements that crop up again from song to song giving a sense of consistency, but each song also genuinely sounds different from the last rather than just trotting out the same structures time after time. Bigger sounds are followed by stripped back ones, melodic songs by percussive ones. Pensive or reflective stuff by more strident material. It is good diversity, a trait I did not expect going in to the listen. I am almost sorry for cutting the first third of the disc even as I continue to listen because the approach is to be applauded. That said, my patience and my ears can only stand some of the variations presented. The middle third of the album is much more to my taste - I have dumped Please, but the rest are staying and showcase the variety well enough.

As I enter the last few tracks I wonder how it will close. Can't Find You harks back to the opening track, but I find myself better disposed to it this time around - perhaps the lyric is more engaging; I find it hard to put my finger on why. It may just be that I have worked myself into a positive mindset, something I did not have at the outset of this post, and that positivity rubs off as charitable interpretation. Who knows. I find myself indecisive about Best Winter - I think it suffers from repetition, but it is short enough to excuse it. I think it treads a line of dullness, but that is quite a pleasant dullness - comfortable. I half want to cut it, half to keep. I think I am going to be charitable - the latter half of this record has impressed me enough that I think that charity is earned and despite Fifteen Miles Downriver feeling like it went on for ages it was a very nice, low key ending to the disc.

I have come out of this surprised and impressed. I did not expect to be keeping more than half the songs from this album going in, but McRae has added diversity to his armoury and employed it well to craft a second half that is very listenable indeed. It will never rank amongst my favourites but I am happy to keep it around.

All Maps Welcome - Tom McRae

Track List:

1. For The Restless
2. Hummingbird Song
3. The Girl Who Falls Downstairs
4. How The West Was Won
5. Packing For The Crash
6. It Ain't You
7. Strangest Land
8. My Vampire Heart
9. Silent Boulevard
10. Still Lost
11. Border Song

Running time: 48 minutes
Released: 2005

Tom McRae burst into my consciousness with his eponymous debut album, which was Mercury-nominated. I saw him tour it and then bought 4 more over the years that followed. To be honest, my impression now is that I should have stopped after the second (Just Like Blood) as the consistency dropped with the years. This is his third album, and whilst there are still a couple of good songs that I recognise and will definitely be keeping in the track list, I anticipate cutting some chaff here after the listen too.

McRae has a distinctive voice, somewhat strangled and strained. Quiet but edgy. It is the standout element of the opening track, which is otherwise quite plodding and far from engaging. The lyrics repeat too much and the music is uninspired. The general ambiance it creates is pretty strong but, maybe it's the tired mood I am in, whilst it evokes a solid image, it provides very little engagement with it. It is like looking at a painting on a TV screen - one step removed. The same goes for Hummingbird Song, which has a very similar structure. Vocal over very sparse but deliberate tune. This is less taught than the first song, but there are elements of tension in the sharp electrics. Neither song has engaged, and in parts this one feels like a less interesting retread of an earlier song, whose name escapes me this second. If that same flawed memory serves the next three songs are the heart of the album however, so maybe things will improve presently.

Certainly they introduce more music. There is a greater tunefulness, more songcraft and more to listen to. I find McRae to have a problem with repetition though, it just feels as though there is too much chorus and not enough verse. I do not believe that is a fair criticism, but it is the honest reaction that smacks me in the face listening to The Girl Who Falls Downstairs. I quite like it, but it just feels like I have heard everything within the first moments of a five minute track. It is an odd impression.

How the West Was Won is probably my favourite tune from this album. This is the example of how McRae did not completely leave me behind. The song as story. It is long, but lyrical, it is pretty and arranged with haunting strings that pull at emotions. The overall tone is quite sad, reflective but there are swells and lulls in the course that means it always offers something. Choruses are delivered differently, bridges put focus on brass. It is not a pop song (as I see them) for it lacks the uniformity. I have always liked its lyrics as companion to the tune. They would not win any awards when read, but they fit the piece as presented on record and beat some of the other efforts on the disc. Like Packing for the Crash where the title is pretty much the only lyric, repeated too often to be interesting. The music is pretty bland too, but it does at least have some depth of sound.

I will be honest here: whilst I recognise about half of the remaining song titles, they do not breed any sense of interest for me, or conjure the songs to mind. This is the problem with mid-to-late Tom McRae, too much is eminently forgettable. His voice and vocal style are very recognisable and he has it within him to write some decent songs, Tom McRae was packed with tight songs, dripping with angst and developed enough to work. These songs? Half have no arrangement of note, the other half have nothing of interest either lyrically or in delivery.

OK, that is a bit hyperbolic but I am prone to that. In truth, I have just drifted a little from this style of music. I went through a phase of loving singer/songwriter stuff almost exclusively, and probably buying the approach more than the actual output. From where I sit now, albums like this one do not stack up well against the wider nature of my library. It is not that he cannot write, cannot play, cannot sing - just that he does not do so in a way that speaks to the me of 2014 with his songs of 2005. There is a lot more depth to the second half here than I have conveyed here; were I interested in a fair criticism I would mention the ache of My Vampire Heart. Instead I am just going to opine about how much more I got from his first album which, hell, may not even stand up when I eventually get to it in a year or more.

I got into Tom McRae at the same time as I got into Ed Harcourt and the two have had similar career paths in terms of the impressions their albums left on me. Good starts, tailing off into mediocrity whilst still providing me with the odd reminder of why I liked them to start with. I should really have bought fewer albums by both, not bought on name and regretted it later but made informed purchases. But if I had done that I would never have heard How The West Was Won or Visit From the Dead Dog which appear on albums I am otherwise indifferent to.

I cannot honestly say how much of this I want rid of. I am in an odd mood this evening which is perhaps colouring this post and I can see merits in several tracks here. I am just not sure they are merits that warrant keeping them. Something to think on.