Wednesday 7 December 2016

John Martyn - Grace and Danger

Eddy Bamyasi
Maverick jazz-folkie John Martyn’s Grace and Danger is a “break up” album from the same stable as Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks or Marvin Gaye's Hear, My Dear.  Best enjoyed, if that’s the word, with a bottle of wine at 3am, such painfully honest expressions of loss, denial, bitterness, and anger, can be strangely cathartic for the broken-hearted listener.

Things are bearable at first. Some People Are Crazy sets the tone with lovely harmonic bass, twinkly electric piano and Martyn rolling his booze and smoke enriched bear’s growl of a voice around his rrrrs. Lookin’ On has a luxurious jazz club atmosphere with gorgeous cymbal laden rhythms, and Johnny Too Bad forewarns of stormy times ahead if our Johnny doesn’t stop behaving badly.

Then the mood takes a serious downturn, beginning with one of the most beautiful love songs ever written, Sweet Little Mystery, where John cries in the night waiting for a letter that never comes. Two heartbreaking pleas for reconciliation follow; both Hurt in Your Heart and Baby Please Come Home do exactly what they say on the tin and all self respect has gone.

So how could she not come back after these passionate declarations of unconditional love? Well, if she’s still listening, the answer lies in the next track where John’s tone becomes defiant (the letter has come and it’s not good news). Hidden deep in the mix he slurs the line “I cheated on the side”. As a rock star on the road for whom “the way I live I’m never on my own”, this can be no surprise, but nevertheless an astonishingly brutal admission to make in public. Anyway, we know by now it’s too late as she is already “in the arms of some new friend”.  The final track, which intriguingly has a co-writing credit with his estranged wife (maybe via that letter?), offers some hope; he’s still angry but is on the way to forgetting.

An equally distraught Phil Collins (whose own marriage was to shortly undergo a similar public exorcism on Face Value) lends moral and musical support with some crisp drums and restrained backing vocals.  The studio can’t have been much fun but for music this good it was worth it; Grace and Danger will stay with you long after the “hurt in your heart has gone”.









About The Author

Eddy Bamyasi

Eddy is a music writer from Brighton, England, named after a Can record. Each Sunday he logs and reviews the albums that happen to be in his vintage Pioneer 6-CD magazine changer, amongst other things.

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