Sean Taylor. Flood & Burn.

Posted on by

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.

Website

Sean Taylor. Love Against Death.

Posted on by

We reviewed Sean Taylor’s last album, Walk With Me two years ago and marked him out as a fine evocative singer/songwriter in the J.J. Cale/Tim Buckley mode. Love Against Death, released yesterday confirms this to some extent with others comparing him to the late John Martyn. It’s fair to say that his fine guitar picking and dry voice does bare comparison with numerous predecessors but here he transcends any influences and the best that one can say is that this sounds like a superb Sean Taylor album.
With a fuller sound than that of Walk With Me there’s less introspection and the guitar is less pronounced. This may be due to the album being recorded in Austin, Texas with producer Mark Hallman but more likely is the fact that Taylor has packed the album with, for want of a better word, “protest “ songs, or at least politically influenced pieces that reflect his views on various injustices in the world today. This is immediately apparent on the powerful opening song, Stand Up and on Western Intervention. Both songs are polemics, the first celebrating the recent wellspring of popular protest, the latter a driving bluesy diatribe against the imposition of free market western imperialism and the impact it has on all of us. Aside from the politics both are fine driving songs that manage to make their point and sound great at the same time. Coal Not Dole revisits the miners’ strike of the early eighties and employs the well-worn refrain which side were you on? With a fine spidery guitar solo present there’s a true sense of anger here. Taylor also delivers more individual testaments on the plight of the working man with a fine reworking of Sixteen Tons and the jaunty Cajun influenced Ballad of a Happy Man where the musical delivery reflects the solace found by those down on their luck in song and dance. Heaven, an addiction song in the tradition of Needle of Death and The Needle and the Damage Done is a dreamy reverie and is probably the song that does sound most like Martyn circa Solid Air.
Away from the politics Taylor provides tributes to some of his literary heroes. Cassady is a gentle reminder of the force of nature that inspired Kerouac and Kesey but which ended up in a solitary death on a Mexican railroad. Les Fleurs Du Mal is an evil sounding slouch which recalls Kerouac’s vision of ‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.’ Taylor’s guitar work here is down and dirty, scrubbing against organ on a song that sounds as if it came from the swamps around New Orleans and is somewhat reminiscent of the recent work of Gurf Morlix.

website

Les Fleurs Du Mal

Sean Taylor “Walk With Me “

Posted on by

It’s a bit like looking for crabs in rock pools, you find tiny little ones scuttling for cover and after a while you don’t bother to put them in your bucket. If you’re lucky however a large rock, pulled back, uncovers a magnificent specimen, large, fierce, a trophy to show to others. And so it is with this gig, lots of albums, often self released, nice, fair to middling, and then occasionally a trophy, something to shout about, this is one such specimen.
Sean Taylor resides in Kilburn but you wouldn’t guess that from his music. His voice is a strained, astringent murmur that is seductive and at times approaches the cool burr of J. J. Cale. His previous albums have been in the main singular affairs with Taylor playing all the instruments, here he handles the guitars and keyboards and is assisted by a stellar cast of musicians including B. J. Cole on pedal steel and Trevor Hutchinson on bass. Together they produce an album that is as comforting as a cup of Horlicks, warm, soporific, something to wallow in. There are love songs, ranging from the hushed “For You” with its tender saxophone evoking lonely rainy nights to the opening spare ballad “Perfect Candlelight” where voice and piano create an almost perfect tenderness.
Elsewhere Taylor evokes the lasciviousness of latter day Tim Buckley on “So High” and takes on a Shakespearean sonnet, “Love Hate On” which he turns into a lazy stroll with a beautiful string accompaniment. Likewise he takes the traditional “She Moves Through the Fair” and turns it into a sinister, doom-laden lament.
Best of all is “Hold On,” a sultry, sweaty and sexy longing that bundles all of Taylor’s influences into one of the best songs I’ve heard in a while. Worth buying for this alone.
Here’s Hold On
Website here