Reviews

Artist:Glymjack
Album: Glymjack
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 14
Website: http://www.glymjack.com/

This album is just fab. I first fell across Glymjack a few years ago through my weekly #SundayListen thing on Twitter. I promptly downloaded some free songs of theirs, and here I am now reviewing this album - for free. It doesn't feel fair. Music has a value, and albums like this especially, so I will surely be looking out for ways to give them some money soon!

Glymjack are singer-songwriter Greg McDonald, Gemma Gayner (fiddle), and Dickon Collinson (bass) and their music has been described as neofolk, progressive folk music, and "folk with attitude", all of which feel appropriate for this new work. Glymjack's music is lyrically folk but musically hard to put into any particular box. Suffice to say, it is all of a quality that should have you listening on repeat. In less restricted times, I would be looking for where they might be playing live. Well, we can all dream.

"Glymjack" is Victorian criminal underworld slang for a street child who led strangers through the streets of London at night with a lantern. The 'Tubular Bells' style intro sets an eerie scene for this beautifully descriptive title track, which identifies a darkness in the light from the dangers lurking in the shadows and parallels that with our modern age. The song is reprised at the end of the album with "Glymjack (single edit)" and "Glymjack (acoustic)", with the acoustic version being an especially fine delivery.

"Treble Top" bounces its way on to the scene with the kind of mood that Pogue Mahone would have created in their heyday (McDonald's vocal is not dissimilar at times to Spider Stacey's). The song takes us into the pubs and clubs we would all love to frequent during these times of pestilence and lockdown, where beer used to flow and live music used to entertain. The song feels like a window on to our recent.

"Nancy of Yarmouth" has a Show of Hands feel to it. Unsurprising really because SOH worked on their very fine "Light The Evening Fire" EP. It's a traditional song that tells the story of 'pretty Nancy from Yarmouth' who dressed in sailors' clothes to smuggle herself aboard a ship. There are many versions of the song, one apparently 56 verses long. Glymjack tell the story more concisely, introducing progressive sounds including a quality keyboard break.

The pace slows momentarily with "Fairy Tale of New Cross", a beautifully constructed and powerfully delivered love song that I can imagine this being a terrific finale to a live performance. "Saul's Reel" starts with an accordion and fiddle duet and goes on to pack a punch like only the best folk rock reels can: bouncing, and full of top rate musicianship.

"Bright Sparks" was released in 2017 and again on "Light The Evening Fire", with this version beginning with children's voices, followed by a 'Riders on the Storm' style keyboard intro precedes this most eloquent anthem, with McDonald sharing the lead vocal with Gayner. "Reclaim the Night" has a hoedown rhythm and a singalong chorus that probably provides its more commercial feel. This a song initially passed me by but grew with every subsequent listen.

"The Killing Moon" is one of my favourite Echo and the Bunnymen songs, so anyone who covers it really needs to convince. Glymjack do. Their treatment of the song manages to tread that difficult path between faith to the original and putting their own stamp on it. I especially like the mandolin introduction to the verses. The keyboard tone they use throughout this album is very West Coast, and shouldn't work in a British folk rock album but it blends seamlessly and gives this work a unique quality.

"Tomorrow England" is a memorable song, not least because of Gayner's fiddle work. The song provides a ray of optimism in the current gloom we all face and positively rolls along from start to finish. "Hope Point" is a ballad about the fragile relationship between a farm owner and his partner, on a farm where the songwriter may have worked: the song feels like it comes from personal observation. Pete the farm owner seems to spend much of his time away from his fields (near Broadstairs in Kent I think), leaving his partner frustrated and alone.

"Made in England" ramps up the energy again with church bell accompaniment in the introduction. When the vocals come in you expect Mike Scott to contribute a cameo. Such is the quality of this album, and one of its successes is that it gifts an almost live experience to the listener. We are all missing 'live' so much but it takes a work of this quality to evoke the sense of a live gig. Brilliant stuff.

The strings that introduce "Balloon" are absolutely sublime, and give the listener the headspace to absorb what has just past while anticipating what is to come, and you are danced out of the album with musicianship of the highest quality. It is a fun instrumental, it is clever, and its Balkan style musical finale provides a perfect ending to this truly excellent piece of work.

I normally pick out from these reviews one or two standout songs. The triumph of the "Glymjack" album is that in this case, I can't. If there is justice in this world we will be seeing this band headline a night at a major folk festival, when they are allowed to resume.

John Reed

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