Tag Archives: Records of 2021

Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2021

Yola – Stand For Myself

Whether as a featured vocalist for Massive Attack or front woman to the Americana outfit Phantom Limb, Yola Carter has been a low-key presence on the music scene for a couple of decades now. The impression you get now that she has fully burst onto the scene is that in those years, she quietly readied herself for the spotlight and always held a little something back for the day it arrived. How else do you explain a full force gale like this? She does not come across like a singer who naturally sits in the background, this is a woman with a commanding authority when she grabs the microphone and a hard-to-dent conviction in the words she imparts. She shouts without bawling, it is a no bullshit approach, the kind that only comes from a true voice with a vision singing from the heart. And even though this is in fact her second solo LP release, I find myself comparing it to something like the first George Harrison solo album. It is that magical moment when an artist who has previously jostled to find their space, finally finds a footing, turns on the tap and watches the music come flooding on down.

I stop short of calling ‘Stand For Myself’ one of the outstanding Soul albums of 2021 because, musically, it is so much more than that. Yola has explained in interviews how she simply grew up loving music; music that she heard on the radio, music she found in her mother’s record collection, whatever spoke to her emotionally she soaked it all up. It has resulted in this, an album that is a mesmerizing mixture of all her influences but not exactly like any of them. In doing so she has created that rare thing that not all artists can effectively realize; her own sound, this record introduces to the world the Yola sound. Impossible to pigeonhole and undeniably belonging to nobody else.

Her solo work truly began in 2019 with the Dan Auerbach produced ‘Walk Through Fire’. I did pay a little bit of attention to that album, mainly because something in the way it was marketed and in Yola’s image caught my attention, it looked like the kind of rootsy soul record I would be into. And it was indeed a good piece, but it did not register in the album of the year stakes or anything like that, maybe it lacked the unique identity so prevalent on this follow up? The Black Keys Auerbach has produced once more, but this time Yola’s own personality is a lot more visible. The creative period of lockdown facilitated this a little, affording the artist time to work out what she really wanted to do with her music. The array of collaborators and writing partners have also opened the possibilities. In addition to the producer there is also Natalie Hemby from the Highwomen, Ruby Amanfu who has performed in the backing singer department for Jack White as well as the quietly brilliant pop master Aaron Lee Tasjan.

The tune Tasjan contributed to, ‘Diamond Studded Shoes,’ is an early album stand out. As a rousing song it is shot with a rare realism. It is very much a call to arms in sound and style yet in anticipating if things would turn out right it emphatically answers, “we know it isn’t, we know it isn’t.” That alone typifies an underlying motivation throughout, in that Yola has viewed this album as a chance to get real, a chance to unleash the soul power at the heart of what she does while simultaneously refraining from presenting things in a one-dimensional way. Musically this leaves the door open for a multitude of influences to reveal themselves. Among the tracks there is everything from Brill Building pop craft, Sister Rosetta Tharpe style electric gospel, Black Keys riffage, Philadelphia soul lushness and even a hint of Freedom Singers folk protest poking through. Lyrically, what has poured onto the page is social, political, personal, lived and learned street wisdom. She is not just going to blindly say everything is going to be OK when she knows better but do not deny her right to hope for improvements and to stand up and fight for her beliefs.

Any album where claims for ‘best of the year’ status are made should, as a baseline requirement, be without any weak tracks or filler. ‘Stand For Myself’ definitively fits those criteria, from start to finish the songwriting standard is high and the range of emotional textures visited upon are dizzying. ‘Dancing Away In Tears’ is arguable the records smoothest soul moment, it has late night pop classic written all over it. By contrast to that tunes widescreen production, ‘If I Had To Do It All Again’ leaves sonic space for the catchy melody to breathe. The rhythm stutters, the bassline punches while the guitar executes savage knife slices, the effect is both dramatic and cool. ‘Whatever You Want’ has one of those low-hanging-fruit kind of melodies that sounds like it has been around forever. That fact alone invests the song with a self-assured strut. Finally, title track ‘Stand For Myself’ has undeniable sunrise chord progressions. It makes for music that incredibly evokes light overwhelming the darkness as Yola testifies “I used to feel nothing like you, now I’m alive, I’m alive!” For real!

Find a vinyl copy of ‘Stand For Myself’ here: https://www.discogs.com/release/19686967-Yola-Stand-For-Myself

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Fruit Tree Records Of The Year, Records of 2021

Declan O’Rourke – Arrivals

As Declan O’Rourke released ‘Arrivals’ in the early part of 2021 the talk was all about how this would finally be his moment. After two decades of being the songwriter’s songwriter, this well-kept secret would finally start to enjoy the recognition he so richly deserved. Ah, predictions very rarely pan out in such a straightforward fashion, in fact as we enter 2022 the side to Declan’s creative output that is enjoying newfound time in the spotlight is his prose writing. He had spent a prolonged period of the lockdown completing his first ever novel, a fact-based fiction called ‘The Pawn Brokers Record.’ Set in a six-month period during the 1845-1848 Irish Famine, O’Rourke had disciplined himself to writing at his desk for six-hour sessions, seven days a week. And in terms of success and exposure, the end product saw his book appear at number four in the best sellers lists on the first week of publication.

Those bold predictions of success and recognition for the album were largely based on the name of the producer, Paul Weller. It always did look a bit fanciful to suggest that fact alone would see the waves of appreciation arrive at Declan’s door. If there is one thing Weller has always done consistently throughout his career, it is respecting the soul of any music with which he is involved. He is not going to muscle in with his own voice and sound trying to make this sound like a Weller record, he has too much class for that kind of stunt. But he did do a fantastic job on production; if the producer’s role is to tap into the essence of an artist and facilitate the realization of that performers sound on vinyl, then he did exactly what was required. Yes, Weller is there on the back cover, regularly cropping up in the song credits on either guitar, piano and harmonium and he also brings in a collaborator of his own in Hannah Peel on gorgeous string arrangements. But the stars of this show are O’Rourke, his weather battered Irish voice, his dexterous guitar playing and those wonderful character driven songs.

Weller’s own connection with O’Rourke began way back with his appreciation of the man’s earlier work, especially the song ‘Galileo’ which the senior Mod went on record describing as the only song he wished he had written in the last thirty years. The story goes that the producer wanted to hear the songs before committing to proceed but you have to say, it would be a shock if he had declined on compositions like these. ‘Arrivals’ is a collection of songs that sees Declan often looking inward, examining his relationship with his craft and his place in a creative industry. He appears to be explicitly addressing this on opener ‘In Painter’s Light’ and yet, as often happens on this LP, the song expands into a broader meditation on the purity of dreams, how the things you hold close to your heart can be so easily crushed when life does not always line up with your inner plans.

Wider topics are written about with equal aplomb, take ‘Convict Ways’ and it’s definite depiction of transport ships moving convicts over to Australia. The song does not merely settle on dry description, it states that progress has not moved far enough away from the days of “being slaves without the name of slaves.” And ‘Have You Not Heard The War Is Over’ may just be one of the finest anti-war folk songs ever written. Not simply because of the way Declan precisely deconstructs the many shady positions that justified past conflicts in the first place, nor for the undeniable way he puts humanitarianism at the forefront of his position. No, it is also because this song has a damn fine folk chorus that can be sung along with instantly and stays in the musical part of your brain long after the album is over.

‘Andy Sells Coke’ begins as a critical, advisory take down of a delusional character dealing to fund his own drug habit. Again though, the song turns inward to focus on the singer himself passed out in a chair when he should have long since grown out of that kind of behavior. “I’m too old in the tooth to be round this shit” the number concludes. O’Rourke often arrives at the core of a song in the moment when his lyric writing turns in on himself. ‘The Harbour’ might seem like a straight-ahead tale of an old gardener and an introspective tiler and the life lessons they have acquired along the way. Still once more, the writer looms into view, recognizing in himself a hunger and desperation to uncork the inner heart and soul of all he encounters to feed into his own creativity. Imagining himself in turbulent waters, where “every wind has a tail,” the singer longs for the relative sanctuary of the harbour. Well, with ‘Arrivals,’ every song really does have a tale and they are all performed by an honest craftsman taking his work seriously and investing with all the passion and feeling it demands. This is a fine piece of folk, singer-songwriter work that could not have been better executed and easily one of the finest we heard in this form during 2021.

Find a vinyl copy of ‘Arrivals’ here: https://www.discogs.com/release/18204775-Declan-ORourke-Arrivals

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