Only yesterday I was driving down our Route 23 (London to Brighton) watching a series of blue flashing lights pass me on the opposite carriageway presumably racing towards an incident. My long suffering family (especially on car journeys) refer to almost any music that's outside the usual four by four rock and pop beat (particularly hard edged electronic music or avant-garde classical with sudden dynamic changes) as "car-crash" music.
By this they mean the sound of screeching tyre rubber and crunching metal (in Log #61 Eddy likened listening to Autechre to being trapped inside a shipping container while being hit over the head with a metal baseball bat). In any case, the point is, it's an unpleasant experience.
Although, to be fair, at the time I had William Basinki's recent David Bowie tribute A Shadow In Time on the player. With it's soothing drones and loops (save for some odd discordant saxophone - referencing Black Star maybe? [actually Low. Ed]) the music was certainly not of the crashing industrial battering genre I'm prone to playing sometimes, but it does tend to induce a meditative state that is almost certainly not conducive to driving - music that doesn't sound so much like a car crash but equally is likely to cause one.
Much more sensible to slot the new Griffin Anthony LP Refuge into the player. Right from the off when the drums thump in on that metronomic four beat the traffic parts and a figurative open road lies ahead. Proper song writing with soul and a real live band (guitar, bass, those drums, and a voice, and some subtle twiddly bits too, perfectly embedded in the mix to add interest along the route). I accelerate away like 2001's Bowman on his way to the event horizon [or Interstellar's Coop for our younger readers? Ed.], bare winter trees mottled by the late afternoon Californian sun race by on either side, and the family recede into the background. Perfect driving conditions.
1-2-3-4 / thud, thud, crack, tap! The opening track to Refuge has a quick acoustic guitar shuffle that drives the song along under thrusts of accented electric guitar but it's that sharp drum beat high in the mix that gives the song that rock edge. Its inception surprises me like when I first heard Neil Young's Out On The Weekend - another classic album opener that infamously set that songwriter on an open road "down to L.A."
However, as we will see, it's not all middle of the road driving for Griffin Anthony's vividly painted "refugees". The Two Americans here are going to get on and live their lives, but separately even though it feels like they should have been together:
Washed up dreams and broken wings
They grew old so separately
It is remarkable how Anthony tells these two parallel life stories in only three short verses and two and a half minutes (I had to check) - seriously efficient songwriting. Perhaps the polar opposite of Dylan on Desire but with the same effect; both albums have 9 songs which feel like reading 9 novels.
There you go. I've said before it's hard to avoid these "if x met y, z would result" sort of descriptions of new music - one track in and I'm referencing Young and Dylan, but they ain't bad signposts for this journey.
We travel onwards with the similarly upbeat Love on Love which uses more of that subtle instrumentation I wasn't keenly aware of at first. Electric piano, wavering clarinet, and strings, jostle for position but just in the background; enough to embellish the infectious start and stop bass and drum groove, but always supplementary to, and never overshadowing, the song. A characteristic throughout this album being arrangements that provide added depth for the careful listener without detracting from the core.
[Go on, I know you want to. Ed.] Oh alright then - John Martyn meets Bonnie Prince Billy.
Evocative lyrics recall scenes both exotic yet familiar - here a man returns from the city to his love waiting on the steps with a smile and a bottle of wine. Life ain't too bad for this working man. It's a comforting picture.
Anthony's rich voice can stretch a word like "wine" into a whole scale. He has one of those effortlessly laid back drawls synonymous with easy going country music yet his soul is more John Martyn or Richard Hawley to my ears than Dylan, Young or our Bonnie Prince. His sound is country based for sure (with a generous sprinkling of contemporary Alt. and Americana) and the lyrics tread well worn country roads painting tales of god fearing, hard fighting, working men fallen on hard times:
Workin’ hard
Punchin’ time
Getting by
But Anthony isn't afraid to rock out too or even get funky in places. An obvious single in old money Only Hope Remains could be a stadium filling rock anthem (I can see cell phones held aloft at dusk in an English festival field) with its crashing electric guitar chords, a sing-a-long chorus and one of those modest and perfectly placed lead guitar solos country rock great Jerry Miller has perfected where the space is as important as the filled up bars. Then to end this opening four song suite of classy country rock comes On The Level which, with it's stuttering acoustic guitar strum, jazzy electric piano, and walking bass, sounds like Bill Withers. Nicely done.
Into the second half of the album and the pace slows as our Pick-up reaches the outskirts of Nashville, Tennessee. Drawing into the dusty studio parking lot Anthony pulls the lap steel out of the back.
Are you ready for the country? The record company has booked some crack Nashville players who lend a hand to the beautiful River which again recalls vintage Harvest era Young and The Stray Gators. I don't know, but I imagine Anthony plays a white Gretsch. He should do.
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| Griffin Anthony surveys his Country |
Another keen snare snap announces 1954 - a heartbreaking slow waltz with mournful backing strings telling the story of a WWII war vet confused by the juxtaposition of simultaneous honour and emptiness:
Help me hold my head up high
Help me take it on the chin
My heart is breaking
And I feel like giving in
There is a brief respite in the form of the light hearted Milly punctuated with Hammond organ stabs. This track being most remarkable for being the second in this short album to refer to a southpaw boxer. One of the Two Americans was a tall southpaw with a golden arm but this time, bizarrely, Anthony makes acquaintance with a woman with a heavy hand haymaker of a swing!
More crushing sadness follows with the curiously entitled The Lucky Architect. I'm not sure about the architectual title or being lucky but the lyrics make me want to hug my children and phone my parents: it sounds like one or the other are dying and time is running out. A plaintive piano accompaniment adds to the mood.
I can see you are fading fast
Faster than the day lasts
I am your open hand
And you are my strength
I am your finish line
And you are my race
I am your quiet place
And you are all my wild
I am your parent
You are my child
***
Now the studio time is up and it's getting late. The tracks are in the can and the boys did good. We load the Pick-up, turn the lights out and lock the doors.
After his success with Harvest Neil Young infamously headed his Pick-up towards the ditch. Here Anthony and the boys head back in time; rolling one more number for the road this lucky passenger feels like he's hitched a midnight ride back to the 50s in Marty McFly's DeLorean.
With it's Spanish style guitar breaks and reverb production Coyote's Lullaby is one of the most traditional sounding songs on the album. Anthony's singing again reminds me of Richard Hawley's sumptuous baritone croon on his classic retro albums or even Elvis. A tale of a goldrush prospector [you did mean the 1950s? Ed.] seeking his fortune far from home under expansive Sedona skies perhaps reflecting the life of a modern day touring musician back on the road again.
Coyote's Lullaby yearns for a return to domestic bliss and a warming home fire. Indeed as the album draws to a close the coyotes are howling in the hills under a harvest moon and we sight the lights of the old homestead. I bring the hay bales in from the barn, secure the gates, and tend the fireplace. A buffalo skull hangs above the mantelpiece.
The band set up and run through the album one more time. Further hidden delights are revealed second time around. The band sound so real and live it is like having them right there in your front room. When they've finished the listener is left feeling like they have enjoyed a personal audience with Anthony.
Refuge is a pure and simple album that takes aim at the heart of the American Dream - a dream which has failed many across the barren landscape of Trump's rust belt. Yet through the honesty of these tales and the organic authenticity to both the stories and the music the record provides a cosy nostalgic comfort, a hope, and indeed a refuge. Nicely done. Very nicely done.
