Reviews

Anthony O'Neill And The Murder
Album: A Season In Hell
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 11/15
Website: https://www.andthemurder.com/

From Paisley and based in London, O'Neill made his recording bow in 1991 as part of Baby Snakes with a Johnny Cash tribute EP which, in turn, saw him invited to join his hero on stage. Today, drawing as much on progressive rock as he does Cash and other country icons, he's backed by his anonymity-preferring band The Murder, the name taken from a collective of crows, along with guest contributions from Greg Paco Radcliffe, Roxi Gregory and Ivan Panella from Glitter Kick, with whom O'Neil plays bass. He playing pretty much everything here, typewriter included, this, the title taken from Arthur Rimbaud's poem, is their debut album, a conceptual project about what hell means to different people.

Commencing with 'The Wild Ass's Skin', a brief instrumental overture with haunted pedal steel, it opens with a cover, their gravelly sung, moody and propulsive anthemic version of Nicola Serkis's 'Swan Song' from French outfit Indochine, a number about being punished for standing up for your rights ("Bloodied, torn and hurt/The broken streets are lined/With bodies in the dirt/In mud and blood entwined/Prepared for the attack/You stand there strong and true/But never turn your back/They're always behind you") that features gospel choir and a bass solo, the refrain "Sios forte/Plus forte/Encore" oddly having me thinking of Toto.

The first original is 'The Coal Tattoo', a desert country-shaded storysong set against a mining backdrop ("In the state of Kentucky they called for me to work the seam/And the man they called Lucky set to live out his daddy's dream"), the title referring to a blue scar left by a coal injury, usually the result of carelessness but here a badge of honour earned by risking everything to save others ("The town heard the rumble, clear as a funeral bell/The shaft had crumbled trapping souls in living hell… There could be no salvation, they were all damned to a man/But with no hesitation, Lucky rose up pick in hand…Stained with blood, scarred by carbon, with steel he carved the way/And he worked like a golem - not a single man died that day") but at the cost of his marriage and job ("Despite his day of fame/He never worked again/And Mary left him for another man/No foreman could see/His scars of bravery/They just saw 'maverick' written on his arm/And he sips up his poison as he sits in his den/'Cause that's all that's left to do").

Featuring Panella on cajon, written by Nick Clifford and again with Lee Hazelwood-like growly vocals (the refrain partly in Spanish) and a dry desert air, the rhythmically choppy 'Daughter Of Fire' speaks of the not so distant dark days when mental illness was something society shunned, locking sufferers away in asylums ("The door is locked with sliding bolt/To keep me in or keep them out?/I have no crime, I have no fear/So why am I locked up in here?").

One of the three tracks pushing past five minutes, Radcliffe on lead guitar, Gregory on vocals and an acknowledged touch of Gerry Rafferty to the sax, 'Nashville Mourning' reflects on a lifetime of quick wins and gratification ("Woke up, it was Nashville morning/And the first thing that I saw/Was the Swedish girl I met last night/Picking her clothes off the floor") and where that can leave you ("When I was but a child/I'd smile on days like this/At the sights, the sounds, the smells the scents/Of ganja, beer and piss/But now those days are gone/And I ain't so satisfied/The promises the future held/Were only lies, damned lies"). Moving on through Memphis and Vegas hangovers, the message remains simple, "don't you cry for days gone by/'Cause they'll just return to taunt you".

Liz Menezes from the Aspidistra Drawing Room Orchestra on violin, the jaunty Lee and Nancy-styled 'On Re-reading Your Letter' is a mordantly humorous song about a man correcting the spelling on his lover's suicide note ("'I loved you, and not mistake'/Well, there's one right there/'You drove me'/That's not how you spell spare… 'As they say in France, me time'/I don't think that they do/And 'suicide' has only got one 'u'") rounding off with the wry "The funeral's on Sunday week/For family alone/I hope they get your name right on your stone".

Opening with churchy wedding organ, the drum thumping, walking rhythm 'Your Big Day' is one of those third party it shoulda been me altarcation numbers ("You're wreathed in smiles, and dressed in white/But there's something that ain't right/The parson's standing on his own/Folks are scrolling on their phones…You stand in the aisle and you're all alone/Everyone's left and they've all gone home/In our motel room we ain't feeling blue/Both holding hands that once held you/Taking the knee but it ain't to pray…I hate to tell you, that's the price you pay").

Another cover, the moodily strummed 'The Endless Plain of Fortune' is John Cale's song about the South African gold rush and the dreams that ran dry along with the gold and diamonds, returning to original material, beginning with sampled radio snatches, for, applying Scottish terminology O'Neill's 'Rank Bad Yin', the seedy vocal delivery perfect for a song in which (originally titled 'Delusional') the narrator's justifying his abuse ("Dames be poison I've heard it said/You're better off single, you're better off dead") and arguing they're the victim ("So what if I get into fights?/So what go drinking nights/So what if I forget our plans?/So what if I have one-night stands?/All I ask for, all I pray/Is no back chat, three meals a day/So what if your friends disagree?/That's no good for a man like me") as it dramatically ends "I chose to teach obedience/You chose to act in self defence/I chose to paint the bathroom red/You chose a shotgun to the…".

Suicide resurfaces in a far more serious manner with the five-minute 'He Lives Beneath the Shingle' which addresses the rarely talked about subject of men, young and old, who take their own lives or disappear without trace ("he lives beneath the shingle/Out of sight and out of mind/A slowly fading fresco/For constables to find"), warranting just a small note on page three of the local paper and with the wrenching poignancy in the lines "No obituary/No name engraved in stone/A postcard in the Kurdish shop/Is his memorial alone/Next to a garish laminate:/Greek lessons, second floor/Dead wasps and grubby fingerprints/Just another boy next door…All that's left is memory/And a puzzle left unsolved".

It ends with a doff of the hat to The Kinks and the circlingly fingerpicked and steel 'Waterloo Sunrise (Christmas Morning)', a slow waltzing winter love song duet that reminds that for many the festive season (cue sleigh bells) is a time of sadness and loneliness ("The night can be so long and cold/For broken hearts and guilty souls"), as it builds to the choral "Your smile was like Christmas morning".

To quote Bukowski, ""I tell you such fine music waits in the shadows of hell".

The CD version comes with four extra tracks, a single edit of 'Swan Song', a guitar edit of 'Nashville Mourning', and previous double A-side single, a Cash scampering train time cover of 'The L&N Don't Stop Here' and a steel stained slow crawl through Nick Cave's 'Muddy Waters'.

Mike Davies

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