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VIN GARBUTT - "The Bypass Syndrome" - Home Roots Music HR CD 008 | ||||
Observe if you will my following and highly opinionated list
of great British singers, for it is, I promise you, germane to this review.
Dick Gaughan: Nic Jones: Rod Patterson: Vin Garbutt: Ray Fisher: Dave Burland:
Martin Carthy: June Tabor: and Archie Fisher. If pushed to produce two other
lists titled "Great 'Live' performers" and "Great Recording Artistes" I'd
place four from that first list of nine in the "Great Live" category and
only three in the "Great Recording" category.
Garbutt would appear on all three lists, and therefore when
I came across this disc in a Virgin store I wondered why had I not seen
it reviewed or even acknowledged. The answer fell into place shortly thereafter,
when I read the only review I've yet see, by Colin Irwin. This reviewer
spent more space on his view of the life and times of Vin Garbutt than on
the silver plastic concerned, managed to get wrong the title Vins' previous
album, and hardly seemed to command a grasp of his subject. A new "-ism"
I though, regionalism where image conscious reviewers loudly proclaim their
internationalism, whilst remaining uncomfortable with the mores and accents
of regions distant from their own in their own country. Reading on through,
I realised there was another answer, and I have to tell you, ladies and
gentlemen it is that Vin Garbutt is NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT.
I'll spare the reader too much historical repetition except
to say that Vins forcefully expressed pro-life views constitute a GREAT
MISTAKE not only in the eyes of the "right on" crowd, but obviously from
P.C. reviewers. I personally don't subscribe to much of Vins views in this
sphere and think the sentiments on "Dish of Glass", (an example of the pro-life
genre which appears on the album), bordering on the ludicrous. I'd be greatly
disappointed, however, if the man suppressed his passionately held but obviously
risky views and took instead to chundering out thinking leftie polemic to
a safe constituency of folkies largely left-of-centre in its views. (Note
that I use the term "unthinking" - by so doing I'm acknowledging that there
is a great deal of the other kind of leftish political material around i.e.
the thoughtful, capable of appreciating nuance, type. It's the ideological
posers and headbangers that'd have you believe that they spend their time
re-cycling old pullovers back into sheep, or believe that the closure of
the Timex factory is a victory, that I object to. It's those posers I believe
Garbutt has fallen foul of).
Enuff..... already to the album. This is the second album
Vin has done using other musicians in addition to his own distinctive accompaniments...
a total of eleven in fact. It's perhaps typical of his desire to plough
his own furrow that he's experimenting in this direction, at a time when
the trend as represented by the recent spate of MTV inspired albums in the
"Unplugged" series is one of artists such as Clapton, Rod Stewart and Neil
Young going in the opposite direction i.e. stripping back and going acoustic.
This time out I think the musicians more sensitively used than on "When
the Tide Turns", as shown on Phil Minchips "If I had a Son" (the dream of
an old miner of his offspring getting a job in the sunlight) and on the
title track, although they do get a trifle "busy" on the rockier "Page Three
Girl". "Nawas's Song" is a standout, the tale of an individual casualty
of Saddam Hussein's persecution of the Kurds, that has much in common with
"Carol Ann Kelly" from the previous album, both using the individual horror
that happens to a child to highlight the obscenity of war that other "civilised"
nations seem unconcerned with. Those who have seen Vin in concert over the
years will be familiar with the song which he was singing long before the
Gulf War.
It's the "Bloom of the Broom" that does it for me though.
I remember him saying some years ago that he had a New Zealand ecological
song that he thought might bore people though he personally liked it a great
deal. It is utterly beautiful, with a tumbling descending chorus that would
deter all but the hardiest of floor singers. Here I'll lapse into cliche
and say that this track alone is worth buying the album - not original certainly
but true. The Garbutt sleeve notes are worthy of note in their own right
(write?) too. Describing the Weeping Broom in this song he notes that it
is ".... a New Zealand species of Broom. Not to be confused with the Scottish
"small ping brush". "The November Wedding" (another excellent track familiar
to audiences" is described as a "sentimental love song bordering on the
emetic". And there's more .... and I pray that there'll continue to be for
years to come on the evidence of this album. If you haven't heard it, seek
it out it's well worth it, and an additional bonus will be the distance
you put between yourself and the bone-heads who would seek to disregard
this profoundly talented performer.
H. Christie
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