Reviews
Artist:Tensheds Album: The Days Of My Confinement
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.tensheds.com
Created and recorded during lockdown having announced to his online audience that he'd write and perform a new song every week while it lasted, this is an entirely one-man show acoustic album that showcases Matt Millership's Rachmaninoff inspired piano playing to stunning effect.
It opens majestically with the piano trills and runs of 'Ticking Clocks', a song capturing the experience of isolation in lines like "Empty trees but the birds sing like they're home yet I got too much of nothing and I'm alone" and "It seems the whole world stopped spinning around and this jolly old merry ship has run a ground", but also a lack of faith ("you wont find me waiting there's nothing more I believe in").
Taking the pace down to ruminative balladry, 'The Bridge Song' and its major chords continue a mood of despondency and resignation ("I waited so long just to stop the hurting/So forgive me if I fade away") that wouldn't feel out of place on a Jim Steinman/Meatloaf epic. Again assuming an anthemic ballad style, 'Mirrors' opens with by a repeated run of minor notes before building in power, this time with a more optimistic perspective ("There's a light shining bright overhead and I know things will get little easier in your head as the page turns and the clock strikes three"), another number that draws on imagery of light, extending the promise of salvation as he sings "I will be the one to save you from yourself/I hold out my hand if you fall in to pieces".
The thematic motif extends to the mutual support of the plangent piano notes of the spare, emotionally raw 'Cotton Wool World' ("When my heart feels heavy with tears and my eyes sore from the salt will you come/will you lay here next to me….will you open up your pain/you can scream in my arms and I will never let go/There is a love I devote to you/and I will never grow tired/I will be your holding hand and your midnight kiss") as he declares "with these hands I'll build us a wall".
While salvation is there too on Hell Is In The Water ("I will save you when the deal goes down"), the musical mood is darker with its handclaps and heavy stalking piano notes etching a marching beat rhythmic sway, the lyrics growing darker with "Shackle up your chains boy stop reading Tolstoy/cos they will come for you and they will destroy".
But then restorative light, tenderness. love and hope return with the sonata-styled circling melody of 'Into The Light' ("Come rest your head upon my beating frame and I will keep for you all the memories that I love"). The style shifts then to a saloon piano ragtime mood with the jauntiness of 'The English Way', a commentary on the traditional stuff upper lip reserve ("Hold on, suffer in silence") that has a slight whiff of Chas n' Dave to it.
The pace falls back, however, for the gently lullabying melody (a touch perhaps of Pachelbel by way of 'Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad) of the apology offering 'Girl I'm Sorry' ("if I was not always there to hold your hand…if I was a little distant …if you were not always first in my mind") with its musical box melody.
The two longest tracks follow, first the five and a half-minute 'Half Of A Heart', quietly opening with a hushed background drone before striking simple resonant piano notes on a song steeped in the soothing power of memories ("When you feel low and you can't stand it remember dancing on the moonlit road with the rain our serenade") and a deep romanticism as he pledges "I'll give you my half of a heart, I just think you might need/I'll give you the space in my head, if you think you might use it… I'll give you every emotion I have/every soft spoken word, every dream of a light of a boy who got one".
Then, almost a minute longer, come the circling, tumbling notes of the quiveringly sung 'Let The Tear Cry', a song that returns to resignation ("I'm too old fashioned and too old for this and I'm jaded so let the tear cry"), or perhaps acceptance ("this has already been and you can't fight it"), streaked with the unsettling imagery of "here come the lice bearing gifts of easy…I don't believe words just empty breathe floating".
It signs off on another lachrymose note with the brief 'A Girl's Tears', a starkly beautiful song that has a definite Slavic feel to it, of accepting loss but looking to hope ("You leaving, because you must/ I understand, but it hurts my heart so much/When you come back, one day, and kiss off my tears the joy will bloom in my heart like a flower").
From the moment I heard his first album, I've been enthralled by Tensheds and his husky, throatily tremulous vocals, a voice carrying in its timbre the weight of the ages, but, stripped to the bone and the nerves, musically, vocally and emotionall, this may well be his masterpiece.
Mike Davies
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