Sean Taylor. Flood & Burn.

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ST-Flood&Burn-Coverideas.inddLondon based Sean Taylor has released several albums over the past ten years which cast him as a folky troubadour with one foot in the blues and the other treading into beatnik territory. He’s been compared to John Martyn (reinforced perhaps by his regular collaborations with bassist Danny Thompson) and Blabber’n’Smoke has sung his praises when reviewing earlier albums, Walk With Me and Love Against Death. Flood & Burn, his eighth album, finds him at the top of his game as he delivers 12 songs that embrace pensive folk moodiness, jazz influences and country blues. Recorded in Austin, Texas with producer Mark Hallman (who plays bass, drums, keyboards and mandolin) several of the songs have a greater American bent than I recall from his earlier albums with the spritely Until The End Of Time skipping along with its twinkling guitars recalling The Byrds and The Sadies.

The album opens with the fog ridden Codeine Dreams, its lonesome sax evoking a film noir treatment of addiction as Taylor almost whispers the lyrics inducing a narcotic feel. It flows freely into the easy bass driven lope of A Good Place To Die which again has a cinematic feel to it as Taylor’s lyrics approach a Dylan like opacity with gutsy guitar solos and whirling organ bursting loose towards the end. From Dylan, Taylor moves into Tom Waits territory with the bristling God-fearing blues shuffle that is Run To The Water and he wades deeper into this territory on the title song which is suffused with biblical images with guitar, banjo and slide guitar providing a skeletal backbone for this delicious dip into an antebellum world. Even more Waits like is the boho bluesiness of Bad Case Of The Blues with Taylor evoking Bukowski and Townes Van Zandt over a blowsy drunken rhythm embroidered by Hana Piranha’s gypsy fiddle while the one cover on the album, Heartbreak Hotel, is given a gutbucket blues dress down, guitars snapping like coiled snakes with Taylor adding some fine blues harp as Eliza Gilkyson joins in on vocals. Taylor relaxes somewhat on the jazzy vibes of The Cruelty Of Man which is almost Tom Waits elevator music (not a criticism) as it slides along with ease, trumpeter Ephraim Owens adding some colour but this late night effervescence disguises the barbed lyrics which rail against the homogenisation of modern culture.

Elsewhere Taylor returns to his native roots on several songs with Troubadour a wonderful conglomeration of rippling guitars, pedal steel and piano that has the autumnal feel of Nick Drake and the gentle propulsion of Pentangle. Life Goes On is a hypnotic drone that does recall John Martyn’s work as it weaves and wends its way while Beautiful Mind delves even deeper into Martyn’s song poems. Taylor caps this with the closing song, Better Man, which features Danny Thompson on double bass on a song that seems to be about the travails of being a travelling musician. Whatever it’s a wonderful closure to what is a wonderful album.

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WAY TO BLUE – THE SONGS OF NICK DRAKE

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Decades after his death Nick Drake ploughs on. After several years as a cult artist he was given a posthumous push courtesy of, of all things, a car ad. Alongside a relentless reissue programme that recycled and recollected his small oeuvre, by the mid 2000’s he was a hip name to drop with the value of the original vinyl albums on sites such as Ebay soaring. Thus it was that his sublime, fragile and unique songs found a new audience and influenced a new generation of artists and this album showcases a selection of his peers and new found followers celebrating him.
Way To Blue captures concerts in London and Melbourne that were curated by Drake’s chief torch bearer, Joe Boyd, a legend himself who has produced so many influential albums over the years. Boyd had long toyed with the idea of a tribute to Drake and eventually the idea came to fruition with a moveable feast that over several years performed fifteen shows. Boyd selected the artists stating “Selecting singers has been one of the most rewarding parts of this exercise. One criterion was that none of them should sound like Nick.” With a core band featuring the legendary (sorry about so many legends here but this is deserved) bassist Danny Thompson ( a man who played with Drake, Martyn, Buckley and Jansch, part of his legend), Zoe Rahman on piano and drummer Martyn Barker, alongside a string section with Kate St. John managing Robert Kirby’s arrangements Drake’s sound is effortlessly captured in a live setting.
There are 15 songs, all by Drake, interpreted by a fine line up of singers. Their various takes on the originals adds a to the album. Some are reverential, cleaving to the blueprint, others take off on a tangent imposing the interpreter’s viewpoint. Of these the most successful is Lisa Hannigan’s Black Eyed Dog which transforms the song into a vibrant sea shanty while retaining the original angst of the song. Vashti Bunyon, alongside Thompson the one performer who knew Drake, offers a fragile take on Which Will which perhaps comes closest to most folks vision of Drake as a wounded troubadour. However all of the performances have merit with Australian Zoe Rendell capturing Drake’s vocal mannerism’s excellently while Krystle Warren adds a gospel touch on her offering. While Teddy Thomson, Shane Nicholson and Scott Matthews all pass muster the listener is perhaps more intrigued to hear Green Gartside’s (of Scritti Politti) version of Fruit Tree which he delivers delicately with his reedy voice surrounded by sumptuous strings and Robyn Hitchcock’s Parasite , a wonderful, spectral and spooky offering. Both of these are excellent with the Hitchcock song the standout on the album, a pity he has only the one opportunity to shine.
For a live album the sound is excellent and there is no audience applause throughout allowing one to wallow in the songs without interruption. A great document of what is a fine enterprise from Mr. Boyd, always striving to keep Drake’s memory alive which is what this disc does.

Navigator Records