This is swiftly becoming “Not really heard their older stuff, but…” month. Then again, it’s the 31st so hopefully that’s all out of the way now.
Latest, and hopefully last for a bit, in a line of slightly guilty posts about artists whose work has gone a bit on the under-appreciated side over here, is from Joseph Arthur – who I have in my collection popping up in the background of the Twilight Singers’ Powder Burns and My Jerusalem’s Gone For Good albums, as well as a more prominent involvement in last year’s rather lovely Fistful of Mercy collaboration.
High time I checked the guy’s own work then. And once more, I have another back-catalogue-based shopping list on my hands…
The first surprise for me was right from the off – Out On a Limb displays a vocal range that I’d not been previously aware of from the slim pickings listed above. A lower register than I was expecting flows through the song – still unmistakably his voice, but it’s nice to have my expectations well and truly snookered before I’d even settled down. The range on show here reminds me of Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, accompanying himself seemingly effortlessly during choruses (most effectively in the Ed Harcourt-esque Almost Blue) and lending a different personality to each vocal altitude.
Despite the large and occasionally stringy arrangements, these songs (like Thurston Moore’s and Bill Callahan’s recent releases) have a solid core that seems to have appeared fully-formed before being wrapped and warmed by everything that goes on around the voice and guitar, turning dusky travelling Americana into something more expansive and less lonely, even when that lonely edge is eased by the application of more of Joseph’s own varied, layered tones.
An exception to this comes in the form of Over the Sun, coming across all 70′s Rolling Stones in the verse and even-more-70′s Elton John in the chorus, revelling in the general bigness of its performance and almost threatening to fly off with the album on its own merits – sat in between two of Graduation Ceremony’s mellower tracks in This is Still My World and Face in the Crowd lends it further volume.
Like many of my favourite albums of the past couple of years, there’s a vague familiarity in the songs on this record, coupled with a faint recollection of stuff that I listened to in the late 1970s and early 1980s, mostly thanks to older siblings (because frankly, my own record-buying habits at this point do not bear delving into). A snippet of Cat Stevens here, a soupçon of the Cars there, and even – in Gypsy Faded – a smattering of vintage housewives’ fave Peter Sarstedt. This musical stance of having one foot in a warm musical past and the other forging ahead into an uncertain and slightly nervous musical future certainly comes across on paper as the sort of posture that would have anyone’s musical knees requiring some serious physiotherapy, but this album is such a comfort throughout that everything here fits perfectly within each other, it’s easy to lose an hour in Graduation Ceremony’s company.
This year’s been a great one so far in terms of both quantity and quality of great music, as well as opening my ears to stuff that I should really have listened to some time ago. This record in particular is a rare joy, and – again – delving into earlier works is something that I really look forward to doing.
No related posts.
Recent Comments