True Stories – Martin Simpson (Topic)
They say that truth is stranger than fiction and in the great tradition of anything “they” say, it’s a big fat pack of lies. Fiction is miles better than truth. MILES better. True Stories, the new album from venerable fretboard hero, Martin Simpson could have used a heavier lick of fantasy to lift some gorgeously mannered playing from fireside tales to epic performances.
The 13 tracks are an assortment of tradition tunes and self-penned works, mostly folk-tinged affairs but with strong whiffs of country and bluegrass that speak of a career almost as established in US blues venues as UK folk clubs.
The tracks that wow are Greystones and Swooping Molly, respectively a languid slide guitar lament and a fingerpicked acoustic guitar solo that both showcase a genuinely superb musician on championship form. On Swooping Molly the guitar strings ring like bells on a track recorded with such clarity that the slightest lapse of skill or judgement would stand out like a shell suit at the opera. No such lapse occurs. It’s a close-up magician inviting you to spot the sleight of hand as he performs miracles under your very nose. Reader, I grinned.
Kielder Schottischer is a belting accordion stomp that reminded me of the best ceilidhs I was dragged to (and around) in my youth and Stagolee is a cracking, over-the-top banjo cowboy classic. But he rest of the tracks are a serviceable meander through Dad-Folk standards (he’s “been to Gary, Indiana, and Bethlehem, PA”, and guess where he found was best? Yawn.) The songs are sung in a slightly geographically variable folk RP accent which didn’t do a great deal for me. The bottom of a pretty well stocked barrel is scraped by just one portion of the song Done It Again, which all of a sudden morphs into a single-issue party political broadcast on underfunding in the military, set to the tune of Humpty Dumpty, which baffled as it bored as it polemicised.
Shame to have missed Father’s Day with this one, it’s some lovely work by someone who’s sounding his age, but if you are too it might be just the trick.
