Reviews

Artist:Julia Fordham
Album: Earth Mate
Label: 444
Tracks: 10
Website: https://www.juliafordham.com/

Starting out as a backing singer for Mari Wilson and Kim Wilde, the release of her eponymous debut album in 1988 announced her as one of the most sophisticated and stylish female singers of her generation, notching up three Top 30 albums (and another in the Top 40) between 1988 and 1994, going on to release a further 10 studio and two live albums as well as the Woman To Woman collaboration with Judie Tzuke and Beverly Craven.

On her latest, a personal affair that details the emotional tapestry of relationships growing and fading, she's joined, predominantly, by producer Spencer Cozens on keyboards, drummer Miles Bould and Scott Firth on bass and guitars, delivering a collection of songs that draw their colours from jazz, blues, folk, soul and the classic Brill Building sounds of the 70s pioneered by the likes of Carole King.

It opens with the quietly understated piano and rippling guitar notes of the five-minute plus 'Home (If This Is What Love Is)', the song's sentiments, born from a meditation session, about finding a place, emotionally and physically, to belong pretty much captured in the title ("If this is what love is/Let's make it/Into heart shaped stepping stones/And let's start walking home").

It sets the laid back, contemplative mood for what follows, her high register voice floating over the notes with a gentle, soft warmth, and, keeping it domestic, is followed by a co-write with Gordon Giltrap, who brings his guitar to add to the piano and Mason's uptight bass, for 'Chair On The Porch', a song about not letting the hurt show ("Pretending to be fine…Carrying this torch/Holding you in my thoughts/Finding all of the ways/To lose track of the days").

The title track with a lower, more intimate vocal note, plays on the idea of finding a soulmate but things falling apart ("Did we make a big mistake/Thinking we could try to fake our way through/My Faith/Faltered and began to quake/Fracture crack and then to break in two"), yet being grateful for the child ("Half angel half feral") that sprang from that union. It's followed by the autobiographical, folk and country shaded softly tumbling melody of 'My Old Table' which charts the arc of relationship "from roses in the candle light/Through the thorn filled screaming fights" and break-up ("I knew that this day would come/When I'd find out you'd found someone/I thought that I would be relieved/Instead I'm weeping in my sleeve") with its catchy chorus set around the solid wood table, "the lone witness/That knows we did/All that we could… where we ate/Ten thousand meals on matching plates").

A duet with singer songwriter Ryan O'Shaughnessy, who also plays fingerpicked acoustic guitar, the beautifully wearied, melancholic folksy 'Done and Dusted' continues along the same lines ("We spontaneously combusted/It was a slow burn til the end/Then it all went up in flames/Now nothing is left but two skeletons/One pound of flesh for two hearts of stone").

By way of a change of topic and backing musicians with Bob Glaub on bass, Maston Stoops on guitar, piano and uke supplied by Taylor Mackall who also produces, opening the sound of harsh wind blowing, 'Everest' tells the tragic true story of Francys and Sergei Arsentiev, husband wife mountain climbers who arrived at base camp in 1998, Francys becoming the first woman to reach the summit without the aid of supplemental oxygen, only to become separated on the descent. Sergie died in a fall while trying to find her and she, despite attempts by guides and other climbers, also eventually succumbing, her body found clipped to the guide rope, the line "Please don't leave me/Like sleeping beauty" an allusion to the name given her corpse, though "If I don't make it back/Wrap me in a Union Jack/Cover me in an American flag/And drag, drag me/To Rainbow Valley" is more songwriter's poetic licence.

The legendary Leland Sklar guesting on bass accompanied by Jake Reed on drums, the lilting 'Sugar Water', a co-write with Eaton with cooing backing vocals, has a more steady walking folksy feel and serves as an ode to the restorative powers of "a million granules on a silver spoon" when you're at a low ebb ("My tears are falling/Though I'm still standing/You've been busy re-writing history/Leaving me looking for a softer landing/On a million feathers woven in the dirt/To cushion my crashing down to earth"). Diabetics, do not try this at home.

On a more whimsical note, 'Circus' ("The kindest show on earth") is a livelier track with a groove that owes not a little to early Motown with the lyrics playing with the attendant big top imagery for its interweaving of romance ("You could be a juggler or an acrobat/I'll be the ringmaster in a black top hat/I'll never be the girl on the trapeze/Flying through the air with flair and ease") and the "number one purpose" to stop captive animals being used for entertainment ("There will be no monkey business/No dancing bear, the next Fred Astaire/Will be the main attraction/We'll be hell bent no elephants will pay the rent/Just you and me as all the animals will be free").

Things get decidedly jazzy, Fordham turning her voice low and moody, with the sultry swaying 'Minor Victories' with its descending scales and itchily repeated title phrase, an encouragement to build on small steps ("Look at that wild flower/Blooming from a seed …Reminding me of me… pulling myself up from my boot straps…trudging through mayhem/Heading for the light").

It ends with a co-write by New Zealander Greg Johnson who both duets and plays all the instruments for the piano-tinkling 'Smile Or Frown' which, another relationship on the brink, is basically a case of "Is it one last waltz or one last drink to it…Are we drifting down two different paths", the underlying Irish pub sway (there's a whistle in there), a sort of mellowed Pogues, that slips in a shot of social commentary on progress and gentrification at the cost of community ("Where Flannigan's once stood it's apartments now/People will pay for them somehow/We will both pay for this somehow/But nobody knows in this town/Is it a smile or frown").

Given the hits and oldies nature of today's UK radio stations, for which her style of music struggles to find a platform, this seems more likely to be embraced by longtime admirers rather than new audiences (though America may be a different proposition) but neither old fans nor those willing to explore will be disappointed.

Mike Davies

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