hissyfit: Albums for Life: Joint 20: Josh Ritter: Animal Years/Declan O'Rourke: Since Kyabram

Thursday, 18 April 2013

Albums for Life: Joint 20: Josh Ritter: Animal Years/Declan O'Rourke: Since Kyabram

I miscalculated; my Top 20 was but 19.

Great, I could fill that void with one of my willfully neglected favourite classics. I sat pondering whether it should be 'Scott 3' or 'Scott 4'. After what seemed like an age, I gave up on the warbling intensity to peel spuds. Then the iPod gifted me 'Girl in the War' followed promptly by 'Galileo'.

Peter said to Paul "you know all those rules we wrote
are just rules of the game and the rules are the first to go"
Paul said to Peter "you've gotta rock yourself a little harder
Pretend the dove from above is a dragon and your feet are on fire..."

Who puts the rainbow in the sky?
Who lights the stars at night?

Good advice and time honored questions.
Unremarkable fare but daily bread for sure.
Ritter and O'Rourke.
Who?
They are both unremarkable, low profile, under the radar etc...
No whiff of prima donna here...
Ritter is often dismissed as 'Dylan Lite'.
He's surely cheerier than Bob...

O'Rourke's modest minstrel muse is surely Sexsmith.
They both look like they've been let out of the care centre for the day...

The arrangements too are unremarkable but perfect.
It's the little things.
On 'Girl in the War' I love the cymbal after "I got a girl in the war Paul her eyes are like champagne" splash. Then 'they sparkle, bubble over, in the morning all you've got is rain...'
Perfect.
On 'Galileo' I love the imperfect unwinding of the melody, then the high falsetto on "someone like you you and made them miiiiine..."
Sexsmith for sure.
Both albums are full of such moments.
If you want to take a punt on something unfamiliar I'd go for these two; imposters in my top 20 for sure. They are the unknown support that blow the main act off the stage.
Simple fare for sure.
Some days the best tastes are the simplest.
These are both fresh bread and unsalted butter to me.

5 comments:

Anonymous19 April 2013 at 09:40
Love the Josh Ritter lp although I went for an earlier one. His new "divorce" lp is well worth getting. I bought the Declan lp but for some reason the hooks didn't take and I hardly played it so gong to have to dig it out and give it another go
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Hissyfit19 April 2013 at 10:07
If it's hooks you're after Dave I'd go for the follow up 'Big Bad Beautiful World' which is poptastic. The debut is a more intimate affair; well worth reinvestigation. His new album is getting mixed reviews and is overpriced. Will investigate when it comes down a bit. Amazon's pricing is all over the place! 'Ghost of Song' was meant to be a teaser that sold for £6.99. It was at £15.99 for the first 4 months on Amazon; effectively stillborn. Frustrating...
Got the new divorce album. Blood on the Tracks it ain't but I'm enjoying it...
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Anonymous19 April 2013 at 12:07
since hmv went south amazon have shifted a lot of their prices upwards
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Séamus Duggan20 April 2013 at 19:08
On Declan O'Rourke - the remark that "it's just natural and rootsy the way music SHOULD be played" raises my hackles a bit. Music can be totally artificial, and brilliant. Or rootsy and dull. Are they still heckling Dylan?
Prefer the Josh Ritter anyway.
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Hissyfit21 April 2013 at 17:10
I think that I do too Seamus...
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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