Robin Adams’ latest album The Beggar maintains a habit which has occasionally crept into his previous recordings, that of revisiting older songs, often just demos or curiosities, sometimes available to download but essentially somewhat ephemeral in comparison to his official releases. That’s not to say that these back pages are in any way inferior, it’s more that Adams seem to be forever on a song writing quest and some of his writings can be waylaid or left behind, only to be picked up again and re examined.
Such is the case with The Beggar, a short collection of nine songs which Adams originally recorded solo back in 2018. At that time he was recovering from a lengthy illness which had led to him being housebound for several years. The songs were briefly available then on Bandcamp but several of them found their ways into Adams’ live sets as he began to play in front of audiences again. This led to the decision to record them again, this time with band arrangements with Adams recruiting a strong set of players who envelop the songs in a deliciously delicate folk like sheen.
Somewhat akin to his 2015 album, The Garden, the album is seriously introspective, the song titles alone giving a glimpse of what to expect (Lost, In The Darkness, Bad Seed). At times there’s almost a sense of dread in the lyrics (When the body Starts to fail/ The heart fades/ And the eyes pale In the darkness/ In the darkness/ I will be) and one is just astonished to imagine what depths were plunged when such words were written and so grateful that their writer is able to reclaim them in such fashion as he does here and throughout the album. In The Darkness is dark, of course, but its spare arrangement, delicate piano, a bowed bass and trembling strings, and Adams’ pleading voice all make for an emotional listen as does Lost which, while not as stark, still managers to evoke a shiver.
It’s not all dark as a dungeon however as many of the songs actually take flight, inspired by the arrangements which, on several occasions, remind one of the set of musicians who peopled Joe Boyd’s Witchseason recordings in the early seventies. This was an extremely attractive and highly influential blend of folk and jazz, usually helmed by the late Danny Thompson’s bass playing and many of the songs here adopt that style, chief among them Ride On and Bad Seed, both of them quite terrific as is The Rover, the opening song which references the “black dog” of depression along with the lonely roads the song writer chooses to travel on. The title song is a limpid and spare ballad which conjures images of an ill fated pre Raphaelite heroine trapped in a dream, a sense repeated on the closing Blue Flower Slumber, an achingly gorgeous song.