Stephen Fearing – The Man Who Married Music (True North)

They used to release Best Of…albums at the end of careers. Now they do it in the middle. Such is the case with The Man Who Married Music, a hand-picked collection from Canadian singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing.

Best Of albums can sometimes feel like contractual obligations – the nail in the coffin of the five-record deal that all parties have grown frustrated with. They can feel like cashing in, or a quick filler when genuine creativity has left the building. It’s to Fearing’s credit that The Man Who Married Music seems a genuinely worthwhile release.

Which is largely due to the quality of deft, atmospheric and sometimes dramatic songs like the brilliant Yellowjacket, and the collection’s opener, Home. You may well have missed them first time round and they deserve a second chance. Fearing was born in Vancouver but grew up in Dublin, and some of his music – The Finest Kind springs to mind – nods quite heavily to British folk traditions, while there’s a hint of Neil Young (that other Canadian) here too.

Fearing is a great acoustic guitarist and a natural storyteller, with lyrics that can seem almost cinematic in their depictions of a big country and the intimate stories played out in it. He’s popular on the folk circuit here and in Ireland, and he’s played at Reading and Womad. As The Man…makes clear, he has a deep mine to seam, and these choice nuggets – with selections dating back to the late 1980s – are worth digging out.

Hugh Wilson