Paul McLure. Smiling From The Floor Up. Clubhouse Records

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Rutland singer/songwriter Paul McLure seems to have built a small but dedicated following from his time spent with acoustic roots duo, The Hi and Lo, who released one album on Clubhouse and were featured in the label’s famed Nebraska sessions, a live reading of all the songs from Springsteen’s album of the same name. Now flying solo, Smiling From The Floor Up is primarily a one man affair with occassional assistance from Clubhouse labelmates Alex and Hannah Elton- Wall (The Redlands Palomino Company) and Joe Bennett (The Dreaming Spires) with McLure describing it as

“a collection of songs recorded without the trappings of a band or orchestra, lightly textured layers with occasional touches of colour here and there; a harmony here, a piano there, a sympathetic slide guitar draped across the shoulders of another.”

It has to be said that the album reflects the description. Standing naked as it were with only his guitar (or in one case a ukulele) to hide behind McLure sits in the tradition of the likes of Loudon Wainwright 111 and says that many of the songs are drawn from personal experience. There’s none of Wainwright’s confessional self flagellation however with McClure sticking to sorry songs of love lost or eulogising the opposite sex as on For You, a lovely and tender song. There’s a frailty and a fatalism to these songs, none more so than on Song 6, inspired by Louis Theroux interviewing a “lifer” in the US penal system as McLure sounds as beaten and defeated as the prisoner. The title song is a dreamlike swoon with lazily picked guitar that recalls Tim Buckley or Fred Neil and halfway through a mournful pedal steel does indeed drape the song adding to the dolorous feel. While McLure solo is beguiling it has to be said that the addition of the other musicians does raise the level of enjoyment when listening to the album. The ukulele strum of Lola-Rose has some mock trumpet while the ramshackle piano and percussion backing to Any Number You Like (As Long As It’s Four) brings to mind a sepia toned pub knees up. The catch of the day here is the excellent Pollyanna which adds banjo, percussion and steel guitar, all somewhat off kilter in a Tom Waits way adding a fine tipsy feel on this excellent tale of a femme fatale who is every “barfly’s dream” who will take you all the way and leave you there.

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Mat Gibson. Forest Fire.

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Five years ago English songwriter Mat Gibson cut a very impressive album in Philadelphia with his band The Broken Hearts. Packed full with fine guitar slinging Gibson came across as a UK equivalent of Ryan Adams at times. Since then he seemed to disappear from view until this re-emergence as a solo artist on Clubhouse Records. In the interim it appears that he spent several years in Quebec and something of the Canadian landscape (or mindscape) appears to have returned with him as Forest Fire is a set of stark, minimalist songs which sound as if they were conjured up on freezing plains with the writer isolated, miles from anywhere. The sound of the North Country (think of The Jayhawks here) also appears to have had some influence. This is most evident on Yonder Burning Tree where Gibson’s harmonica and guitar could have come straight from Hollywood Town Hall. Gibson plays all of the instruments sticking in the main to acoustic guitar with sparse accompaniment from his harp and occasional keyboards. There are some other embellishments, the slide guitar on the opening song Lord Only Knows, played by Jonathan Berry lends a plaintive air to what is an excellent song. Forest Fire drips like an icicle, a pale fire indeed as Gibson sings of seeing forest fires sending plumes of smoke into the air as he flew back from Quebec. On this elegiac song with heartrending vocals and a perfect marriage of guitar and strings Gibson’s lyrics cast a perfect light on the stress and strain and regret left behind when a relationship ends. The aeroplane metaphor is revisited in Icebergs where Gibson sings of having nowhere to land, buffeted by the forces of nature conspiring against him. An airborne version of Titanic, Gibson sings of “the band playing silently on” as the ‘plane circles endlessly.
After the glacial outpourings of the previous songs the final cut, Where Demons Go, adds some muscle with some electric guitar thrashing. Almost an exorcism after the confessional nature of what came before it Gibson asks “won’t you give me one more chance to make things right with us.” Whatever the answer there’s no doubt that that this album marks the return of a major talent to our shores and it’s to be hoped that we don’t have to wait five years for the follow-up.
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Lord Only Knows