hissyfit: Albums for Life: 26: James Grant: Sawdust in My Veins

Saturday, 6 April 2013

Albums for Life: 26: James Grant: Sawdust in My Veins

For his 1998 debut James Grant moved away from the guitar histrionics and blues stylings of Love and Money and concentrated on songs and the singing of them.
And what an intense vocal performance he produced.
Needle to vinyl; a scattershot rim ushers 'Pray the Dawn' in, and you melt into the sofa:

Just another star-crossed lover
Fallen on the thorns of life

The strings of The Scottish BT Ensemble wrap themselves around the song and all is well with world.
Faultless arrangement after faultless arrangement follows; it's all swoon-some and pitch perfect.
There's emotion wrung from every note of voice and guitar but never does it feel forced; a genuine tour de force in fact.
I hate to get trainspotterish but there are moments of singing on 'I Don't Know You Anymore' that are truly transcendent. Grant has ditched the nasal whine that tainted some of his previous performances; now the sustain and control is spectacular. If you have the album listen to the Chicken Skin moments as they come thick and fast in just that one song:
- 'I never tried to love you...' The vibrato on 'you' (1.00)
- 'To bring it back somehooooow...' The tremulous sustain on the last word (1.10)
- The same section of the 2nd chorus (2.20)
- The restraint of the first guitar solo (warmed by exquisite strings) after the second chorus (2.30 - 3.10)
- That same vocal section of the 3rd chorus (3.44)
- The final guitar blitz at 3.58
It's sultry and sonorous fare; serious as shingles. You can't imagine James wearing a paper crown at the christmas party and offering you a tug on his cracker...

It seems too that the man (or his label) is oddly protective of this work; I notice that there are no downloads available on Amazon or iTunes and it's really hard to find YouTube videos of any tracks from the album. Maybe I'm being a numbskull but I can't place this video of 'I Don't Know You Anymore' on the page. It's well worth clicking the link to see.
I'm not big on solos but, bugger me, there's a fine moment at the end of the song that rivals the album version. It makes me want to get the tennis racket out and go strut my stuff in the bedroom mirror.
Finally, here's a solo version of 'This is the Last Time' that passes muster mirthlessly...

8 comments:

Séamus Duggan7 April 2013 at 03:49
Another completely new to me artist and the album isn't on Spotify either. What do they expect you to do? Buy It? I like I Don't Know You Anymore though. Will have to listen to the albums that are on Spotify.
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Tim Patrick7 April 2013 at 09:19
Enough about Spotify Seamus! I've just been terminated by Canuck regulators after wintering in Florida. Just when I thought I had it...

Big thumbs up for 'Sawdust'. I had it @ #51, kinda low, eh? I thought you'd go for another one...

PS: Hey, I just trawled back and see you slipped a Love & Money album into your list! Maybe I was in transit and missed it.
I seem to recall a pow-wow where you declared your great admiration for James Grant solo but "underwhelmed" & "indifferent" to L&M... and receiving a stern rebuke from David et moi. Change of heart? Peer pressure??!!
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Hissyfit7 April 2013 at 19:47
Another fair cop TT. I think that I thought that Dogs was a Grant album...
One of the joys of the list is the revisiting and rediscovery; how easy it is to conveniently dismiss from the memory.
Seamus has given me some Rotten homework to do; it's like being back at boarding school..
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Anonymous7 April 2013 at 20:35
Another mighty fine review of a fantastic album. I remember, on a visit back to England, searching high and low for the 'Pray the Dawn' single' It still remains one of my favourite tracks by any artist and certainly my favourite Grant track.....but after saying all that I have another Grant album in my top 20.
Phil
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Hissyfit7 April 2013 at 23:59
Intrigued as to what you've gone for Phil.
Is that poetry & music I smell?
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‘Jones’ is Trevor Jones; principle songwriter with the critically acclaimed duo Miracle Mile, where he works alongside collaborator, arranger and musical partner Marcus Cliffe. Together they have produced nine albums, the latest of which was 2012’s ‘In Cassidy’s Care’, rated ‘Album of the Month’ by HiFi News, with respected journalist Johnny Black noting that Miracle Mile were “far and away the most unfairly unsung musical wizards ever to emerge from this sceptered isle. Big on memorable tunes wrapped around honest-to-goodness emotionally involving lyrics.”

Trevor Jones has also previously produced four solo albums: ‘Hopeland’ (2009), ‘Keepers’, (2010), ‘To the Bone’ (2014) and ‘Happy Blue’ (2016). Co-produced again with Marcus Cliffe, ‘Carver’s Law is another triumph of intimacy.
Previous critical acclaim for Trevor Jones:

“Gorgeous, as ever. Trevor Jones finds the poetry in real life; gently beautiful and genuinely moving. You may cry.” The Sunday Times

“Masterpieces of subtlety and observation clothed in sumptuous, lush melodies.” R2

“Jones is in a class of one. Near-perfect explorations of the human heart. The beauty on offer here is enough to make you weep. It did me.” Americana UK

“Achingly tender.” Folk Radio UK

“Intellectually as well as emotionally engaging.” MOJO

"Meticulously orchestrated, careful and complex, this is canny songwriting leavened by bona fide humanity." Q

“Moves you to tears and refreshes the soul. Scintillating.” Maverick

"Gentle enchantment. The loveliest melodies you've ever heard.” Uncut

“Classic pop songwriting, gorgeously realised. Jones has compiled possibly the finest catalogue of adult pop. Gently beautiful and genuinely moving” The Times

Miracle Mile: A User's Guide by Johnny Black

Despite being based in a home studio in a rural backwater on the outskirts of West London, Miracle Mile chose to name themselves after a fictional gold rush main street half a world away where, according to adventure yarn spinner Jack London, ragged 49ers would blow their hard-won nuggets on booze and broads.
They apply a similarly unorthodox approach to their career in general. The band’s core duo of singer/guitarist Trevor Jones and multi-instrumentalist/arranger Marcus Cliffe have been relentless in their pursuit of the perfect song. Not the fastest, the gnarliest or the loudest, not even the most instantly commercial, but the song whose melody, lyrics, arrangement, performance and spirit might stand the test of time, giving pleasure to listeners not just for years but centuries.
They’d be the first to admit they haven’t yet found that perfect song and maybe never will, but I’d argue that their albums — the documentary evidence of that search — deserve a place alongside the best work of time-tested tunesmiths as elevated as Randy Newman, Elvis Costello or Tom Waits.

Marcus Cliffe wasn’t yet on board when the first album, Bicycle Thieves, arrived in 1997 but already it was evident that frontman Jones didn’t fit in with the prevailing mode. There was no rage, bitterness or self-loathing in his songs and nothing at all turned up to eleven. Instead, he offered meticulously orchestrated slices of ordinary human life, transforming the mundane into the marvellous with carefully crafted lyrics sincerely delivered. Even here, though, the hypnotic sample-based "Recycletwo" revealed a willingness to experiment that marked Jones out as more than just a pop craftsman in the vein of Crowded House or Aztec Camera.

What had started essentially as a recording project had become a five-piece live band by the time the follow-up, Candids, was released in 1998. Loaded with nagging guitar hooks and dynamic vocal interplay, it included one particularly affecting piece, "Small Ad," which featured just one line of lyric, the heart-rending couplet, "Baby’s shoes, never used." With those four words, Jones conjured up a yawning abyss of grief that other writers might struggle to evoke in an entire album.

Jones quickly realised that live performance was not his forte and retired to the womb of the studio for 1999’s third album, Slow Fade, which also saw the birth of the partnership that would lift Miracle Mile higher still above the norm. Marcus Cliffe, in demand as a player for Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Daniel Lanois, Mark Knopfler and others, was drafted in on upright bass.
Immediately the music took a more intimate turn, with Jones exploring the little things that illuminate the big things. Almost every song offers up at least one unforgettable line, like "I'd rather be ashes than dust" in "Everybody Loved You," or the concept of filling the void left by his loss of faith "with despair and metalware" in "Starwatching."
Slow Fade was further enhanced by the delicately filigreed swirls and swoops of England’s finest steel guitar maestro, B.J. Cole, whose style sat so well with Jones and Cliffe that he has become virtually a full-time member of the band.

And then, out of nowhere, catastrophe struck. Trevor Jones’ beloved sister died in tragic circumstances. It’s typical of the man that, rather than wallowing in his grief as he had every right to do, he dealt with his loss in the quiet, honest dignity of "Sister Song," the achingly lovely tribute that concludes the fourth album, Alaska. It can’t have been coincidence that the album, despite its meltingly beautiful musical landscape, was named for one of the coldest places on earth.

By the time of Stories We Could Tell in 2004, Miracle Mile were drawing critical plaudits in every significant British magazine and newspaper, along with comparisons to such pop pluperfectionists as Prefab Sprout and the Blue Nile. Critics were noting that Miracle Mile was fast becoming a repository of timelessly romantic music fueled by the same shamelessly emotional human concerns that inspired the great standards. More than this, it was being noticed that while most bands go into decline after two or three albums, Miracle Mile were getting better, perhaps because they’d avoided the trap of trying to be contemporary, and had no need to be more outrageous than the competition, largely because they didn’t see music as a competitor sport.

The sixth album, Glow, showed up in 2005 and found Jones and Cliffe further expanding their musical palette mixing Celtic folksiness with slow, semi-industrial percussion on the inspirational "An Average Sadness," blending Badalamenti guitars with Bacharach horns on "What Kate Did Next," and opening "Strange Sympathy" with a beautifully synthesised string orchestration before letting the song melt seamlessly into a laid-back country-rock rumination on the gap between aspiration and acquisition. Glow was also their most lavishly packaged disc, gorgeously presented at no small cost to themselves.

Album No. 7, Limbo, offered fifteen songs overflowing with sensitively wrought melodies and heart-fluttering lyricism. If it’s not a contradiction in terms, Limbo was even more quietly passionate than usual, deliciously understated and, at times, devastatingly tear-jerking.

‘Cassidy’s Care’ followed in 2012 and received similar critical acclaim.
Miracle Mile may just be too concerned with timeless quality for their own short-term commercial good. They’ll never sink a fang into the jugular when they can plant a whisper of a kiss on that sensitive spot at the nape of the neck and set off a tiny ripple that will, in the fullness of time, explode in the heart. I, for one, wouldn’t want it any other way.
Johnny Black

“Trevor Jones finds the poetry in real life; Marcus Cliffe anchors it in the sweetest pop. Gorgeous as ever. You may cry.”
Sunday Times

"Gentle enchantment. The loveliest melodies you've ever heard."
UNCUT

“Gorgeous melodies, hooks galore, intelligent lyrics that demand and repay careful listening, beautifully produced instrumentation, and an overall effect that combines poignancy and joy in equal measure. Music and words come together in a state as close to perfection as makes no difference, and leaves you with a delicious ache that makes you hug yourself with the sheer overwhelming joy of hearing such wonderful music. The beauty on offer here is enough to make you weep. It did me."
Americana UK

“A little oasis illuminated by musical creativity, glimpsed like a lovely mirage. Intelligent tunefulness that doesn’t kowtow to passing trends has always been as rare as fish fingernails, but it’s here.” Mojo

“Classic pop songwriting, gorgeously realised” The Times

“Moves you to tears and refreshes the soul. Scintillating.”
Maverick

“A tender sadness. Songs that have universal resonance.”
Netrhythms

"Trevor Jones has produced a gorgeous pop album that few will hear — unless there’s justice in the world.’ The Wall Street Journal

“Jones has compiled possibly the finest catalogue of adult pop. Gently beautiful and genuinely moving”
The Sunday Times