![]() A fine lyrical guitar solo dances with a subtle sustain, giving way to piano. Pageant like musically prior to power chords as female backing vocals building the piece. ‘ A Man For All Seasons’ finds us stoically in historical form. In recent years the Downes Braide Association has been producing music like this under a progressive pop guise. Slower, more eerie, like one of those old public health TV adverts that used to warn about the dangers of waters, it also invokes music hall variety aspects and an understated guitar solo symphonic in structure. ‘ Life In Dark Water’ is a different proposition. Musically, I’m in mind of Caravan with Camel’s Andy Latimer guesting on the guitar solo, albeit it’s Stewart frequent collaborator of the time Peter White. A tale of a lady who’s left and bid a presumed friend goodbye, while in my mind’s eye I’m picturing that John Cusack/Kate Beckinsale film Serendipity. While ‘Time Passages’ spoke of Christmas, this time the opening piano line evokes the sound of falling snow, but it’s soon into a soft bouncy rock and roller in ‘Valentino Way’. The song remains one step from melancholy, memory lane traversed in a Spanish guitar solo, a jazzier one blown on sax, then sweeping up in more profoundly with a fuller orchestrated sound, varying in arrangement and at over six minutes long not outstaying its welcome as thematic overture to the record as a whole. Better to take the rough with the smooth, sit back, chill with a glass of wine and soak in an album stirred with genuine emotion.Įlectric piano guides into the title track, a soft rhythmic hook and the lines “It was late in December, the sky turned to snow,” draw the listener in swiftly, a saxophone weeps round the edges of the song warmly, and but a bar or two later when he sings “Well I’m not the kind to live in the past,” has us playing the Doubting Thomas, we’ll accept we can learn from our mistakes and wonder what ones are concerning the singer right now. That his songs often touch on personal feelings as well as delicate and otherwise interactions with others is a damn sight deeper to my mind than the mindfulness attributions of today’s various media celebrities that cause me to raise an eyebrow in disbelief at what I perceive for the most part to be ingenuity. For the most part, it is still quite relevant. It’s of its time in much of its scope, production sound (by Alan Parsons) and ambition. The music at its mildest a kind of soft rock by way of John Lennon, where more fluid and atmospheric in its arrangements bridging the Canterbury side of progressive rock with the more wistful contemplations of say Leo Sayer. Often, he weaves facts and impressions of times gone by with the more personal aspects of his own life, as quiet and thoughtfully introspective as they might be. Stewart’s penchant for historic narrative is given full measure across the length and breadth of the main album. It opens up in wide gatefold manner, bearing not only the original album’s cover artworks, but the aforementioned booklet featuring photos and interview on the one outer packet sleeve and a facsimile of a promotional poster of the time on the other.ĬD 1 features a remastered version of Time Passages, CD2 single versions, demos and tracks from a live radio show in Chicago. ![]() There’s a 3CD/DVD Deluxe Edition Box set available, but the 2CD version I have for review is more than adequate for those of us less familiar with Stewart’s work. Still active to this day, long-term fans obviously faithful but for such collections as this to come along assumes a growing interest from new listeners for his back catalogue. Did fashion demand punk give way to new wave so quickly and we forget all that had gone before? Not in the USA it seems, where Al Stewart continued to have a series of hit singles for a while. That Time Passages, first released in 1978, was a platinum album, proves quite shocker. A different story from the mythos the likes of the late John Martyn would have us know. While born up north, when a child his widowed mother moved to Dorset, and one gathers he was later privately educated. The extensive booklet that comes with this collection explains that and many other matters concerning the man’s career. ![]() Should you not have been a fan, aside from the evergreen ‘Year of the Cat single’, what might you know of the troubadour Al Stewart ? That he made his bones, at the now famous Les Cousins Folk Club back itself in the sixties? That he was born in Glasgow, Scotland? That last one always threw me with his precise diction being so English in its mannerisms. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |