Album Review # 30 King Creosote - From Scotland With Love

 

I bought this album a couple of hours ago and I love it already, even though I haven't yet heard it all the way through and only knew one of the tracks well before its purchase, Bluebell, Cockleshell 1,2,3, which I chose as song of the day a few days back. The record just feels right. It has that sure tread of an album that knows it's good and will last. It reminds me of Dexys, of Van Morrison, of British Folk Music rooted in real experience, but there are also more modern, unexpected touches. None of it seems out of place. It has an understanding of music, tradition and time long gone, a due respect for that and a sense that all that buried experience is a rich and resonant as what we ourselves are going through. In some ways more because it's so important that it's remembered. Because that's what we are.

 

 

It's the work of Gordon Anderson chiefly, the driving force behind King Creosote. He's an incredibly prolific artist who has put out up to 45 records under that name over the last 20 years or so. This is his latest and is the soundtrack to a documentary archive film of the same name which came out this year, tied in with the Commonwealth Games, held in Scotland and of course the push for independence, the referendum will take place in a few weeks.

 

 

It starts with an elegy, Something to Believe In, which could easily be the last song. In fact it's returned to melodically in the final track so serves both roles. It sets the tone for a record that's immersed in time. 'Dreaming without sleeping. Morning, are you leaving? But our story has only begun. Now promise to be real.' Incredibly simple. But all the better for it.

 

The record is unmistakeably Scottish and proud of it. The accents are clear, unmediated and proud. It avoids clichés but is not afraid of the sentiment. In fact it's infused with it. It feels like a soundtrack that doesn't require its film.

 

 

I'm going to get to know it. It feels like a friend already. All the best records are friends. The accompaniment changes according to the song and its requirements. At various points you get the traditional guitar, bass, drums and keyboard but also viola, clarinet, violin, mandolin, cello and lots and lots of backing vocals by the time of Pauper's Dough a whole crowd. It's really quite varied in terms of mood. It's all incredibly assured. Anderson can pick up the mood to a Celtic jig, which almost veers off into Eastern European territory on Largs but it all sounds very modern to me and all of a piece too because the focus of it all is of shared communal Scottish experience.

 

I never quite got The Proclaimers, who were doing similar things in the Eighties. They overdid it rather for me whereas this is really quite understated in comparison but equally proud. The front cover of the record shows a sepia tinted picture of a Scottish beach from, I imagine, the late Fifties. The back sleeve shows an elderly flat capped man walking slowly down an urban street towards a bar in the twenties or thirties with a small kid wheeling a bike past him. The inner sleeve has a picture of another flat capped factory man struggling with all his might with a lathe in the docks. Then there are the lyrics.

 

 

It's incredibly resonant and incredibly beautiful. New highlights are pushing themselves forward as I play it into the evening and the shadows darken. For One Night Only stands out as a Neu driven

call to come out on the town on a Friday night. It's not quite like anything else here.

 

 

But Bluebell, Cockleshell 1,2,3 and One Floor Down are more traditional and equally wonderful. And the album is headed towards Pauper's Dough the album's heart which is just breathtaking. Defiant and resolute.

 

'Injustice on its knees underground
The clawed-out tonnage is to our detriment

 In these clarty surrounds
The combined earnings of our tenements
Won’t stretch to many rounds
And yet we’re striving to be counted

We’ll fight for what is right
And we’ll strike for what is rightfully ours
And I want better for my boy
To bury my father in dry, consecrated ground

You’ve got to rise above the gutter you are inside

Rise …

Rise above the gutter you are inside

You’ve got to rise above the gutter you are inside

Rise (above the gutter you are inside) '

 

 

Then A Prairie Tale, essentially Something to Believe In reworked, beautifully and it's gone. I think it's a masterpiece. It kind of makes me wish for Scottish independence because if that comes to fruition it surely couldn't have a better, more evocative and timely soundtrack. A record that looks back yet forward. My favourite new album of the year thus far! I couldn't recommend it more highly