Reviews

Danny Horn
Album: The Death Of Lucy
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.dannyhorn.co.uk

Horn's third album, the title relates to his fictional muse and the name he uses when referring to friends, lovers, enemies, himself, or indeed anyone, and is intended to be her last outing as he puts her to rest. As such the album conceptually uses the metaphor to relate a toxic love affair from which the protagonist is seeking to escape while finding themselves unable to forsake the masochistic agony it brings, or, as he sings at one point "I miss you but I don't wish to".

Backed by violins, double bass, guitars, glockenspiel, piano and percussion, it's a folksy pop affair of infectious melodies that at times recall early Al Stewart and David McWilliams, the latter notably evident in the opening 'Pretenders' with its dancing gypsy fiddle as he warns "Hello? Hello! I'm damaged goods and you should stay away/Avoid this schizophrenic love", carrying a suggestion of imposter syndrome.

A change from Lucy, the bouncing, lively Slim Chance-folk of 'Keep On Careening Karina' has the title character as another representation of a toxic relationship ("she got you in a hole/And you're digging and you're digging 'til you die/Because Karina knows what she's doing/It's not the first time Karina's done it to you"),one from which the narrator has finally disentangled himself the song set in the aftermath ("I'll be fine Karina but Karina you're a dreamer/If you think I'll drop the world at your pretty, pretty feet/Wrap me round your finger and I'll sit here to sing/About Karina making me obsolete")

Positioned somewhere between Nilsson and Stealers Wheel, 'Strange Shade Of Blue', from whence the album title comes, again is about slipping the chains you've somehow allowed to bind you ("who was she and how did she reap these ancient stones from my heart?/Put me in the middle, place the finish line back at the start/'Cos now I'm reassessing everything, reassessing all that I see/Trying to shake the feeling all these people are looking at me") and prompted a dopamine deficiency leaving him "reeling from this pigeon-shit psychology".

Another character ("gentle, a bit temperamental") makes her appearance with 'Lorraine Is Exhausted', another seeking to make her escape ("Lorraine had enough and she's chosen to go….She's turning her back on the nuclear blow/Eclipsed by her own afterglow") though he laments that "I couldn't move on like she could/Lorraine tried to show me through actions of love/But I didn't learn what I should".

Pushing past the five-minute mark and wandering through Kilburn and Finchley, 'Stolen Nights In Jericho' is percussive punchy, loping double bass and fiddle flying number which exudes a sense of disgust ("I saw you in Knightsbridge purchasing some morality/Thousands of coins you spent on forgetting about me/Take off your face, take off your mahogany stilts/Shake off my taste, shake of your kerosene guilt") as the protagonist declares themselves "sick of this suicide town" as the lyrics lean into themes of addiction ("I bite and I sting and I stroke and I dope them to hell/Eventually fill them with hope as I bid them farewell"). There's a sense of mental turmoil perhaps in the lines "I meticulously studied your face, asked if you were for real/And I kissed you like stones in the road, I kissed you for me/And I left you Poe-faced in the wake of your ceremony/Kicking free of the grip, of the trip, of the bones in my throat/Adding onto the fire the poem you wrote").

One of the oddest titles of the year, 'South Korean Style Cauliflower Wings' is also one of the catchiest and more optimistic tracks with its calypso lilt and the Steve Harley air to the vocals as Horn sings "We stand in the shadow of original sin/Go ever gentle to the fires within/And we roll the dice and don't think twice/Everything is coming apart/So we drink, swapping horror 'til the fires die down"), sweet Carolyn and Marilyn embodied in the subject of attraction ("I'm taking her away from Alistair/He threw an ashtray at her") as they "hit the M11 and drive" to a restaurant to order, yes, you got it.

There's more of a Balkan gypsy feel to the rolling rhythm and piano/guitar notes of 'Deep To My Eyes' and the tumbling lyrics of a doomed relationship ("Look deep to my eyes as you say I disgrace you/And place you as one with an arrow that's gone through your heart…Your eyes start to stray as you're walking away/I throw down my armour, I try to disarm her/I know that you love me. How could you leave me like this?...And I'm running to chase her to tell her I've wasted/These long precious years…Another false hope and it's leaving me seething/And breathing this fury, so purely, I don't know who I am anymore"). Horn has a theatrical background and you can feel that coming out as he sings "The man that I used to be, gone, he's eroding/Un-coding these riddles in the middle of the mess that I made/Whilst Lucy is seemingly fine as I'm screaming" that feels like some soap opera crisis.

Horn recently played Ray Davies in the musical 'Sunny Afternoon', which makes perfect sense as you listen to simple piano ballad, 'Radio Play' both in its sensibility and lyric imagery (I redesigned you with metaphor, guitars and strings/The double denim sodden sticking to your skin/In Marylebone it always rains/You wrote me off, I wrote it down and turned it in" with the meta-reference "It's my obligation to fill it with a piano part/The cafe humming with a drumming déjà vu" as he sings about song as an emotional outlet ("All I'm bereft with has turned to music, one, two, three/You went away and so I dressed it/In treble clefs and a mediocre melody").

It ends with one final farewell nod to his muse ("Strangled by the ghost of Lucy/Tangled in my hope/Manhandled by the truth") in the jazzy double bass groove of 'The Ropes' and seeking to let go of "loosely slackening …the ropes that keep me sane/The ropes that keep me on the straight/The ropes that lead me away from you", which while he can't quite let them slip he's certainly trying ("it's time to disappear, it's been made clear/That this restless devil rides alone/Twisted alleyways can resurrect the olden days") even if "darkness hides whatever/I've been striving to avoid/The little thing that draws the wind/Has rendered me destroyed/And it stains my whole perception/In the most aggressive way".

One of those can't live with you, can't live without you' scenarios translated in the theme of artistic creation, he urges "stone me if I go to her/Kill me where I stand" yet ironically without her the curtain call would not exist ("Lucy, she offers me another for the road/You know she's the only one who understands the symptoms I unload/And though a risky road, I know, it's one I'm willing to explore/Despite the howling cries of consequence that rattle on my door/See once again, I've been compromised by Lucy's silent scream/To which I fold away and gently sway the rhythm of those dreams").

Quite where he now seeks inspiration and expression remains to be seen, but if Lucy is finally put to rest, you have to admit she left him with a terrific parting gift.

Mike Davies

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