ALBUM REVIEWS
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ALBUM REVIEWS |
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Jackie Leven
THE HAUNTED YEAR: SUMMER: BAREFOOT DAYS and DEEP IN THE HEART OF NOWHERE COOKING VINYL 3.8.09 @www.vanguard-online.co.uk
We’re nine months into the re-issue programme. Jackie Leven has been putting out his fanclub releases, official bootlegs if you like, in double album sets, every three months. It’s a marvellous way of revisiting the highlights of the back catalogue and I happen to prefer his sound in a live setting – it is more straight forward but no less rich and complex. The tones of the acoustic guitar are deep and the tapping foot is percussion enough. Jackie sometimes seems to enter a trance, crooning and twisting sounds. Jackie is a very talented guitarist as well as singer and the playing is close and detailed in atmosphere, whilst being relaxed and an accompaniment rather than showing off. First of this double set is from Otley. He opens with a studio song, Barefoot Days, unreleased elsewhere. It is meditative and melancholy. The live set has a lovely setting of a Robert Frost poem and an old favourite, Washing By Hand, which paints pictures of ancient landscapes and the souls that inhabit it. Desolation Blues barely moves and yet ticks sadly along. Exit Wound borrows from an old Doll By Doll song (a much-hymned band he fronted decades ago). It is powerful and a hit in an alternate universe. It borrows a line from Elizabeth The First; “If you could look inside my heart, you’d see a body without a soul”. Phew! Between songs, Jackie tells tall tales and wins the audience with a mixture of scatology and profundity. He discusses Otley’s old “Ava Gander” shop, treading on Joni Mitchell and a hilarious story about chatting women up by picking eyelashes out of their eyes – or is it bogey? The second disc, from Brighton, gifts us a couple of studio songs, a lament and an old folk tune (Nottamun Town). The formula is similar to the first disc. Standouts are Universal Blue – one that will stick in your head. Marble City Bar explores how you can come to lose your humanity. Single Father is a standard of his, cropping up frequently in concert. Needless to say, it is contemplative and it becomes a hypnotic mantra. Working Man’s Love Song sees Jackie’s partner, Deborah Greenwood, adding vocals and the complement is great. Paris Blues / Down By The River is astonishing. He brings up David Thomas, a previous collaborator and all round arty strange bod. Founder and lynch-pin of avant-garde garage rockers, Pere Ubu, he oozes arty pretension. Between the pair of them they deconstruct a couple of songs into something rich and strange. It’s a track I keep coming back to. Add in a collection of very funny yarns about chip shops, regional variations in moaning and record companies ad you have a condensed Jackie Leven concert. Not as good as trekking out to a pub for a real ‘evening with….’, but an accurate and very enjoyable substitute. Find a comfy chair, pull up a glass and a bottle of your favourite poison, pop a CD in the player and settle back for a psychic massage. www.jackieleven.co.uk More Jackie Leven on Vanguard Online: Interview - September 09 |
