Robert Chaney. Cracked Picture Frames. Jagged Lines Records

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When Robert Chaney, a Floridian musician, decided to move to London a few years back he didn’t have any contacts so he figured he’d check out the open mic scene. As he tells the story an early appearance led to him coming to the attention of producer Ken Brake and together the pair of them set out to make Cracked Picture Frames. It’s a bold album, Chaney, armed only with acoustic guitar and his lonesome voice, delivers a stark and startling effort that fits into the solo, haunted singer/songwriter tradition. The quality of the songs and his immaculate delivery however elevate the album above its peers, head and shoulders above in fact as song after song stuns the listener. While Chaney dips into Southern Gothic, Greenwich Village folk, Texan troubadour and delta blues styles on various numbers he stamps his authority all over the album.

His lyrics command attention be it telling blood stained tales such as on The Ballad Of Edward And Lisa or waxing poetically on the magnificent Does Your Love Pay Out In Full, a song that would sit very comfortably on Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks. Dylan and Townes Van Zandt might be names that come to mind when listening to the disc but to these ears, Cracked Picture Frames recalls the desolate howl of the first Loudon Wainwright album and the bleak landscapes that can be evoked by Eef Berzely from time to time. While there’s a hint of The Handsome Family’s grotesquery in some of the words the grim humour is absent, instead Chaney is bleak, he observes and reports with a poet’s mind. So we get a story of a child blinded by his religiously delusional aunt, a Mexican school bus crash, domestic violence, a forlorn lover wanting to patch up a broken relationship. On what might be the most arresting song on the album, The Cyclist, Chaney is as naked as Dylan was on his first albums, recalling the likes of the Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll as he narrates a mini movie that is noirish in the extreme as the protagonist, involved in a love tryst with his brother’s wife ends up paying for a crime she commits instead of revealing his betrayal. A nice update on that old standard Long Black Veil, it deserves to be heard.

Cracked Picture Frames is a wonderful album, proof, if needed, that one man and his guitar can be riveting as it paints pictures in the mind. His voice, a cracked crooner on the drawn out words of Corazones Amarillos, urgent on the bluesy Black Eyed Susan draws you in and the guitar work is simple but beguiling. One imagines that live, an audience would listen, hushed, to these meditations, in the meantime the album more than suffices.

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Hi Alerts. Conjure Time. Twenty Stone Blatt Records

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Let’s take a trip…………………….to Sunset Strip, to fuzzed out guitar, to wild and wailing harmonica, to beauty and beast boy/girl singing. Conjure up Sky Saxon or Kim Fowley subverting the peace and love vibes of the blissed out California sixties with their mondo wackiness, add some later essence of X and possibly Sonic Youth and you have the recipe for Conjure Time. The Hi Alerts are essentially a car crash collision of two Glasgow bands, The Primevals, swamp rock garage band par exemplar and Los Tentakills, purveyors of weird and witchy psychedelic trips. The resulting mash up is an album that should please fans of both bands with The Primevals’ Martyn Rodger’s guitar assaults adding plenty of heft to the lysergic leanings of the usual Los Tentakills affairs.
With Rhod Burnett pounding the drums and Ady Gillespie laying down a solid bass, Rodger and Al Hotchkiss flail away on guitars creating a fine Pebble dashed bedrock for singers, Michael Rooney and Celina Oxymandias. It’s tempting to call them a wigged out Sonny & Cher but in reality the pair of them are reminiscent of John Doe and Exene Cervenka tardised back a decade to the sixties and fronting a twisted Hollywood’s director’s idea of a way out combo, perhaps waiting in the wings of Russ Meyer’s Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls.
Folk who recognise the name checks above will already be forming sounds in their head as to how Conjure Time sounds. If you’re not familiar with them then suffice to say that Conjure Time is packed with songs that are undeniably retro but which howl to be heard in the present time. The opening song Four Walls is an incredible guitar warped groove, Broken Heart is Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood (or George Jones and Tammy Wynette) punked up. Stop Messing With My Mind is a sonic guitar mind melt while Straight Ahead To My Soul wrenches the ghosts of the MC5 and forces them to party with Sonic Youth when they were Geffen bigwigs circa Goo. Losing Streak is one of the songs that most recalls the heyday of X with Rooney and Ozymandias in perfect twisted tandem. Catastrophe is a mighty showcase for the duelling guitars here with wah wah and screaming solos battling it out for supremacy over the funkiest background here. They close the album with Twisted In The End, a fuzz fuelled diatribe that again brings us back to the essence of X although it’s much more frantic than anything that combo ever laid down on record with a veritable wall of sound towards the end. Magnificent.

Buy it here

Johnny Dowd

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The Dark Bard. That’s what one of the comments on our review of Johnny Dowd’s splendid album That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse called the man. The commentator seems deeply immersed in Dowd’s music, witness his website here so  the Dark Bard it is. Anyhow, the DB himself was kind enough to take some time out from his preparations for his UK and European dates later this month to answer a few questions we winged over to him.

The new album, That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse is pretty much a solo effort with you recording all of the instruments yourself, something you haven’t done since your debut, Wrong Side Of Memphis. Was there any particular reason for this?

There were reasons for this–financial and artistic–but mostly it just happened that way—one thing lead to another and presto chango the album was done—might have sounded better with a real drummer who wasn’t a machine-I hope this answers your question

I read that the title is lifted from a line in Johnny Guitar Watson’s Gangster of Love song where he’s baiting the sheriff. Is this a favourite song of yours?

I love that song, I even like the Steve Miller version–Johnny Guitar Watson is MONSTER talent, better than The Beatles

A lot of the album sounds electronic but the sleeve only credits guitar bass and keyboards. I presume a lot of the sounds came from a synthesizer or some such keyboard, can you tell us a bit about the equipment?

What you say is true. Matt Saccuccimorano mixed the record and put voodoo on the basic tracks–thus a guitar might end up sounding synth like–and of course I ran the bass, guitar and drum thru various mind altering pedals –so what might have begun as a Howling Wolfish tune became more King Crimsonish

White Dolemite is a fine and funky piece of braggadocio with references to hot pants and spanking. I take it it’s a tribute of sorts to the Blaxploitation movie Dolemite.

Absolutely —Rudy Ray Moore is a genius

Although you’ve stamped your authority on all of the songs it seems to me that at times you’re almost blatantly referencing influences, sixties TV themes in Cadillac Hearse, Iggy Pop on The Devil Don’t Bother Me for example. Am I making this up or do you have specific sounds, songs or genres in mind when you wrote these?

Now Paul, I’m not sure if blatantly is the way I would describe it but anyway–maybe I am being too sensitive —I don’t have anything much in mind when I am writing the songs but it’s true when I listen back the ghosts of all my influences is there—I don’t really hear the Iggy thang on Devil but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there–it’s not really important what my intention was because I don’t know or have forgotten–the train left the station without me
Why? is a glorious song that sounds cosmic and cornball at the same time. With some great absurdist lyrics ” somewhere in Oklahoma, just a few miles from the beach, stood a cowboy with a surfboard and unto me he began to preach…..” and with Anna Coogan’s lovely refrains it’s like The Man who Fell To Earth remade by David Lynch. Can you describe how a song like this comes together, where you get the idea and lyrics from?

Yea–Anna is killing on that song–she was a real important cog [along with Matt] in the machine–that song is probably as close to an autobiographical song as I will ever write–the last verse [about the spaceman] is a feeling that has haunted me whole life–I can’t describe any better than I did in the song

Can I ask about the hero of your last album, Do The Gargon. Is he still around or have you laid him to rest?

Gargon is retired and living in Key West Fla
You’re coming to Europe in April. What can we expect to hear and see?

I will be touring with Mic Edmondson on guitar and his wife [and my sister] will be doing the tour managing–Mic and i have been playing on and off for about 25 years so we have some good chemistry–I’ll have my drum machines, synths, and guitars–we will be playing mostly new arrangements of songs off the new record pus a bunch of golden oldies. A few covers [Louie Louie etc]—poems, stories—pretty much a free form wtf kinda show–plus my friend Mark Lotterman will doing the opening slot and there is not a finer singer-songwriter performer out there–! Hope to see you soon Paul—thanks -Johnny

Tour dates.

2015.04.09 Krefeld (DE) @ Kulturrampe
2015.04.10 Eeklo (BE) @ N9
2015.04.11 Nottingham (UK) @ Guitar Bar
2015.04.12 London (UK) @ The Islington
2015.04.13 Eye (UK) @ The Bank Eye
2015.04.14 Brighton (UK) @ Prince Albert
2015.04.15 Leicester (UK) @ The Musician
2015.04.16 Lille (FR) @ La Peniche
2015.04.17 Eindhoven (NL) @ Blue Collar Hotel
2015.04.18 Rotterdam (NL) @ V11
2015.04.20 Zurich (CH) @ El Lokal
2015.04.21 Frankfurt (DE) @ Dreikoningskeller
2015.04.22 Norderstedt (DE) @ Harksheide
2015.04.23 Amsterdam (NL) @ Paradiso Upstairs
2015.04.24 Zeist (NL) @ De Peppel
2015.04.25 Hengelo (NL) @ Heartland Festival

And here’s an oldie that is too good not to revisit.

Sergeant Buzfuz. Balloons For Thin Linda. Blang Records

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Sergeant Buzfuz are a South London based vehicle for singer and songwriter Joe Murphy’s agit folk pop and social commentary songs which they deliver in an attractive faux naive folky style. Deceptively simple, down to the cartoon rendering of the band on the album cover and the band name, there’s a temptation to dismiss this as almost a novelty item. Dig deeper however and there’s plenty of evidence that Balloons For Thin Linda is a well thought out, well crafted (and subversive) album.
The basic band (William Barr on mandolin, Ian Button, drums, Eilish McCracken, fiddle, flute and whistle and Murphy on vocals and guitar) are fleshed out with bass, violin, cello and accordion offering the opportunity for the song arrangements to accommodate some baroque stylings which at times are reminiscent of the ornamented musings of late sixties/early seventies folk rock. Meanwhile Murphy’s deadpan descriptions and his vocal delivery recall predecessors as varied as Alan Hull of Lindisfarne, Robyn Hitchcock and Ray Davies, the latter most pertinent as the album purports to be an aural tour of London territories and Davies is of course the rock poet laureate of London. However, with the exception of S6 Girls (weirdly enough the song that most approximates early seventies Kinks) which describes a girls night out in Sheffield (Murphy’s home town) it’s hard to pin down this supposed concept on listening. Never mind, the album works without a detailed knowledge of the difference between Kensington and The Elephant and Castle and it’s best perhaps just to sit back and enjoy the songs and this is where the album gets interesting.
While the band deliver some fine songs such as the driving Robyn Hitchcock like Gold Feelings and the Irish strains of Molly’s Bar the meat is in Murphy’s acute observations of modern ills with the deceptively attractive Move, Carmelita seeming to be about a trafficked woman, held in a soundproofed room for men’s pleasuring. Infinite Kingdom Of Dirt tears down the idolatry of monarchy and the imperial delusions thrown at us by the media as wounded soldiers are cast aside and civilian deaths in the Middle East are ignored. The title song concerns a mentally ill woman wondering the halls of Harrods with the music meandering between a false jollity and a darker hopelessness. It’s a yin/yan thing perhaps. Enjoy the music but read the words and it’s to their credit that Sergeant Buzfuz are putting these songs about. Do have a listen.

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And just to prove that Sergeant Buzfuz have a sense of humour

Johnny Dowd. That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse. Mother Jinx Records

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A scrofulous screaming desert storm of guitar noise and a forlorn saloon bar piano are the first sounds you will encounter on That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse, the latest album from Ithaca’s Johnny Dowd. Amid this maelstrom he gravely intones
“That’s your wife on the back of my horse. That’s my hand in your pocket. Around my neck is your mother’s locket. Your sisters will dance at my wake. Your brother will blow out the candles on my birthday cake. That’s your wife on the back of my horse.”
Sounding like the late William Burroughs howling in an electric dust storm Dowd immediately stakes his claim to be one of the most left field candidates in the field of Americana with this opening gambit. It might scare some folk away but for those who stay the course the album is a hell of a ride.
Dowd recorded most of the album himself playing guitar, bass and keyboards with an electronic drum kit and the whole was then mixed and produced by “voodooman” Matt Saccuccimorano. The end result is a gripping kaleidoscope of thrills that mixes Southern Gothic with synth sounds that fart and burp. Tales of the devil bump up against gangster braggadocio and cosmic weirdness. Listening to the album cinema references kept coming to mind, Repo Man, The Man Who Fell To Earth, Wise Blood, all mutated and mashed in Dowd’s leering imagination. As on his last Album, Do The Gargon, Dowd adopts various musical styles, sixties TV cop themes in Cadillac Hearse and Iggy Pop’s The Passenger on The Devil Don’t Bother Me while Words are Birds is reminiscent of Snakefinger’s work with the Residents. This might all sound on paper a bit of a mess but Dowd has a firm hand on the tiller, his voice and drawl, deranged, modified, discombobulated throughout, cuts through and is immediately recognisable.
The lyrics for the title song are inspired by the boasting of Johnny Guitar Watson on Gangster of Love where he baits a sheriff saying, by the way, that’s your wife on the back of my horse. This cocksure bravado is revisited on the buzzed up funk of White Dolemite, a nod to a Blaxploitation movie from the seventies which gets down and dirty with Anna Coogan singing hot pants, he needs a spanking throughout as Dowd lists his love powers and is then updated on the rap of My Old Flame. Coogan turns up again on Poor, But Proud, a defiant rail against poverty and aging. Delving into the South The Devil Don’t Bother Me is an awesome mix of Teutonic synth discipline and Baptist hell fearing belief while Empty Purse is a nightmarish whirligig fairground ride of a song that again reminds one of a cinematic equivalent, in black and white, the carousel out of control in Hitchcock’s Stranger On A Train or the scenes where Janet Leigh is drugged in Welles’ Touch Of Evil. Whatever, it is scary. Akin to this is the voodoo soaked tale of Female Jesus who makes her living on her back and who used to play in a punk rock band, a succubus to avoid surely but the song sucks one in.
In the midst of all of this musical mayhem there’s an absolute nugget of a song that encapsulates the album. Why is, on the face of it, a lonesome love story that is played relatively straight as far as the rest of the songs go with a regular rhythm, country guitar stylings and a male female call and response. However the routine breakup stuff soon swoops into alien territory with the lyrics and the music climbing into cosmic consciousness. Ana Coogan appears again and her vocals are sublime as she pits her disembodied self against Dowd’s cowboy spaceman on what is the best song I’ve heard this year.
That’s Your Wife On The Back Of My Horse is available now and Dowd has a short tour in April and May, dates here.

Robin Adams. The Garden. Backshop Records

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If you live near the Shawlands area on the south side of Glasgow you might have seen Robin Adams striding along, usually with his guitar in bag strapped to his back, his lion’s mane head of hair flowing in the wind, he’s quite a striking sight. Fortunately, he’s quite a striking musician as well with his previous albums gathering a bit of a cult following, similar to that of the late Nick Drake three decades ago when Drake was known to only a few cognoscenti. Reviews of Adams’ previous works have compared him to Drake and John Martyn (the Martyn comparison is odd other than that they share a Glaswegian background) but there are some elements of Drake to be found here. There’s a melancholic feel to the lyrics and a bucolic air in the music but the comparison ends there, to these ears it’s the likes of Roy Harper, Robin Williamson, Bert Jansch and Will Oldfield who come to mind with beguiling melodies and lyrics that can be darkly beautiful.
Adams stares that The Garden was influenced by his thoughts on Vincent Van Gogh, the painter’s struggles with his internal turmoil, his darkness and light. However, the album’s hazy sameness, an almost repetitive search for peace recalls another painter, Monet who captured the likes of Reims Cathedral in different lights at different times of the day trying to capture the illusive nature of light. Monet ended his years obsessively painting his garden at Giverny. As with light so with sounds and Adams, perched in his bedroom overlooking his garden, offers variations on this theme.
Overall The Garden is the sound of one man and his guitar. Occasional harmonica, keyboard, percussion and bass intrude and there’s a cello on one of the songs. A fine guitarist with a wisp of a voice that only occasionally betrays its Glaswegian origin, Adams roots around in the soul of despair. He cites Rimbaud’s description of a soldier’s corpse (Sleeper In The Valley) as inspiration and this is most obvious on the apocalyptic lyrics of Collision Course that closes the album while the opening song, The Garden is full of foreboding with spilled blood fuelling the garden’s growth. Paint Me The Day is almost iridescent as Adams sings of “burning red skies over fields of gold flowing like rivers of colour all born from your soul.” Packed full of beautiful metaphors it’s a powerful plea for love. Throughout the album Adams displays a fantastic poetic bent, his words paint pictures, impressionistic, not story telling but allied to the slight Americana touch in Keep Me or the naked guitar lines of Troubled Skies he is riveting, demanding a replay to properly savour the songs. The Garden isn’t an album to put on as background music, it demands and repays close attention and the rewards are there with Street a magnificent meditation on the fragility of the human condition. With the devastating opening lines “your heart is made of paper, your life is made of glass so beware of those who reach for you” delivered over a rippling guitar that recalls Arthur Lee’s Love on Forever Changes, the end result is sublime. Meanwhile Need Not Turn is perhaps the best song Will Oldham hasn’t yet written.
The Garden is a wonderful listen for those who delve into the nooks and crannies of a songwriter’s mind, it flows, brackish and dark perhaps, but seeking an outlet.
Robin Adams is launching the album at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe on Saturday 4th April.

Robin Adams Facebook page

Kilkenny Roots Festival 2015. 1st – 4th May 2015

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Since 1998, The Kilkenny Rhythm and Roots Festival in south east Ireland has attracted some of the finest names in the Americana canon; acts like Calexico, Giant Sand, Ryan Adams,Alejandro Escovedo, Mark Eitzel, Guy Clark, Chuck Prophet, Ray LaMontagne,Richmond Fontaine, John Murry and Rodney Crowell. Last year it won the Irish Best Small Live Music Festival while one of its main venues, Cleeres won the Best Live Music Venue in Leinster award.

This year’s festival is from 1st – 4th May and is jam packed with some spectacular acts. Calexico, , Lee Bains III & The Glory Fires, The Barr Brothers and Sons Of Bill and a songwriting circle of Aiofe O’Donovan, Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz are just some of the acts announced to play.  Also on the bill are Ryan Boldt, head honcho of Canada’s Deep Dark Woods,  ace new country singer-songwriter Cale Tyson, Glaswegian Daniel Meade and a rare Irish date for the acclaimed US songwriter Eef Barzelay. US band Daddy Long Legs will close the festival on the Monday night with their unique brand of primitive rock n roll. In addition there will be a number of free gigs around the town all weekend as part of the Kilkenny Roots heritage trail. By all accounts this is a fabulous weekend with the Guinness flowing throughout and a great opportunity to catch some stellar acts in intimate surroundings and while Blabber’n’Smoke can’t make it this year we’re booking up for 2016 as we write.

Tickets and general information can be found on the website http://www.kilkennyroots.com and apparently the box office, Rollercoaster Records is, we are reliably informed, not only the best record shop in Ireland but the happiest little record shop in the world!

Here’s a video made for the 2013 Festival

Little Mountain.

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Little Mountain is the creation of Ross Godfrey, a member of trip hoppers, Morcheeba. With his partner, Amanda Zamolo, Godfrey had become a bit of a California Dreamer when, spending time in Santa Cruz, he began to write a song that for him captured some of the golden era of Laurel Canyon on the cusp of the sixties and seventies. The song, Catch Me was recorded by the pair with assistance from Will Sprott of The Mumlers and Dan Joeright (Drummer for Jim White and David Byrne) before Godfrey and Zamolo returned to the UK. Back home they cast about for a third member and a serendipitous moment occurred when they chanced upon a busker on London’s Southbank. Impressed, they invited Ste Forshaw to sit in with them resulting in him becoming the third leg of the tripod that is Little Mountain.
Forshaw adds an earthy tone to Godfrey’s LA haze, a yin to his yan perhaps and together the trio have crafted an album that ripples with sunshine melodies and harmonies allied to a strong beating heart rooted in a more Anglicised folk idiom. Godfrey embellishes the album with a plethora of instruments (vintage guitars , early synthesisers and Hammond Organs, bass, lap steel and drums) offering a texture that is warm and enveloping, at times recalling Steven Stills’ bluesy organic style as on the organ driven Hide Me From The Darkness. Elsewhere his experience with Morcheeba is utilised as he wraps Zamolo’s voice in a warm electronica fuzziness that’s not a million miles removed from early Beth Orton on What We Gonna Do. While Forshaw comes across more as a ploughboy than a cowboy on the folky Even More and the short instrumental Sound Mirror is like Pentangle meeting Portishead the meat here is in the swampy sludge of You Never Know and the keening harmonies of the opening song, Giving it Up. Altogether a fine listen.

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Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys. Ionia

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It might not be a trend as yet but recently Blabber’n’Smoke has noticed bands that are using the basic tools of bluegrass and adding their own particular twist. Examples include Fish & Bird, Front Country and Run Boy Run where elements of jazz and chamber music are more prominent than backwoods Appalachian mountain music. Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys fit into this slot neatly with their all acoustic set up (guitar, mandolin, Dobro, banjo, double bass, cajon, harmonica and hambone) rarely breaking out at breakneck speed. Instead there’s a delicacy in the sounds they weave and although they sound nothing like them one is reminded of the way The Pentangle shook up sixties folk music when they used fused jazz and instrumental prowess to create their powerful hybrid. Of course one can argue that some bluegrass players such as David Grisman have been doing this for years but after several years of back to basics shitkicking roots music bands (and nowt wrong with that of course) the pendulum seems to swinging in the other direction. Anyway, the other striking point here is Lindsay Lou herself. With a voice that can accommodate folk, blues and jazz she is the focal point of the album. Her phrasing is elastic enough to navigate the twists and turns that some of the songs undertake although she never veers into vocalese. In addition when the band turn their attention to a more traditional sounding song such as on the excellent River Jordan she carries it off as if she were a born and raised Baptist soul singer.
The album itself was recorded in a four day session in the dining room of a clapboard house in the town of Ionia, Michigan with the band grouped around a couple of microphones. Although each member of the band has a primary instrument they swapped around a fair bit during the sessions with the end result that one is never too sure who’s playing what without recourse to the liner notes, testament to the instrumental abilities of Joshua Rilko, Mark Lavengood and PJ George III. They kick off with Hot Hands, a perky little confection which has an occasional similarity to Nick Lowe’s I Love The Sound Of breaking Glass. It’s an attractive piece but lacks the depth the band prove themselves capable of later on. There’s much more muscle on the brooding Everything Changed with the band charged up, the guitars vibrant and driving the song along with a fine mandolin solo towards the end. The Fix returns to the poppier sensibilities of the opening song but is less twee with some intricate vocal harmonies and from here on in the band settle down to weightier concerns. Old Song features mandolin and banjo over percussive acoustic guitar and is a fine example of their ensemble playing and harmony singing with a wistfulness in the words and in the playing which is as sweet as a mountain stream. Sometimes is a bluesy number with harmonica to the fore but the band adorn the song with pizzicato fiddle and double bass along with some snappy brushwork on the cajon. Sung by Mark Lavengood, Sometimes ends up sounding as if a classical string quartet were playing something from The Band’s Big Pink. There’s adventure too in the odd rhythms of House Together where they start and stop, change their time signature and doodle their way to the end of the song. Over this challenging backdrop Lindsay Lou moves from wide eyed home improver to imperious vocal dominatrix.
The album sails to its conclusion with a mighty punch beginning with the aforementioned River Jordan, a gorgeous song that is the most traditional sounding here. Here Between is another string driven chamber pop piece that flows wonderfully and the title tune, Ionia is a masterful nod to tradition, American and Celtic, with flatfoot stomping over a gorgeous melody that seems as old as the hills.

Ionia is available now and the band have a short tour of Scottish dates in May following an appearance at The Shetland Folk Festival. Dates are here

David Corley. Available Light.

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It’s not often that one comes across a debut album from a 53 year old. It’s even rarer for that album to be a stone cold cracker, an instant classic (if such a thing exists), an album that immediately rewards and then gets better on repeated listens. Well, David Corley has achieved this with Available Light, ten songs of experience and at 53 Corley has a lot of experience under his belt. Raised in Lafayette, Indiana, Corley attended the University of Georgia leaving at the age of 20 after a series of “ecstatic visionary and mystical experiences” if we are to believe the biography. There followed 30 years of wanderlust and odd jobs coupled with a voracious reading and writing habit. Following cardiac problems he returned to Lafayette which brings us up to date and to the album.
Produced by Canadian Hugh Christopher Brown Available Light is an album that shuffles and stumbles with a wonderful, almost homemade charm. That’s not to say it’s lo-fi, indeed its wonderfully warm and organic, meandering for its 55 minutes in a magnificent manner. Corley’s voice is lived in, deep but not rough, a gruffer version of Willard Grant Conspiracy’s Robert Fisher while his delivery (and some of the song arrangements) remind one of John Murry on The Graceless Age.
The band (Gregor Beresford, drums, Tony Scherr, bass, Kate Fenner and Sarah McDermott, background vocals and Hugh Christopher Brown on piano, hammond b-3, clavinet, wurlitzer, and vocals) create a fine Southern sound similar to the sounds created by Eddie Hinton and Tony Joe White, swampy, blues infused and soulful with the female vocalists perfectly complementing Corley’s vocals. A highpoint is acheived on the tender Lean, a song that eschews the rumbling guitars that weave like Virginia Creepers throughout the album for a short piano led ballad with Corley’s voice emotion packed amid excellent female harmonies. Here Corley waxes poetically, possibly influenced by Walt Whitman as he sings
the river moves
through the sand archives
i might have been holding her up –
i’m not gonna this time
i relinquish control
i think it softens my eye
i believe in the power of this moment
but i let it wash over the bow
i believe
you got to lean into it
Corley is able to deliver a relatively straightforward narrative as on the dream like Easy Mistake where he opens the song with
I hopped up into my truck
but I headed to the wrong bar
got way too fucked-up
started wishin’ on the wrong star
– but the sky, man, it’s so large….
that’s just an easy mistake
but many of the lyrics on the album have a poetic quality from the “life as a movie” quality of the opening title song to the closing epic The Calm Revolution where Corley seems to allude to climate change. Married to the cool crisp funk of the title song or the hazy shimmering guitars of the seven and a half minute closer the words flow as easily as the music creating an atmosphere that is nothing less than magical. Definitely an early contender for an album of the year.

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