Reviews

Graham Robins
Album: The Shipping News
Label: Global Sessions
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.grahamrobins.com

Van Morrison casts a very long shadow and Graham Robins has probably spent a good portion of the last 40-odd years trying to escape it. I get the feeling he's no longer so bothered and The Shipping News is undoubtedly a better record for it, steeped in the American traditions of rhythm & blues, gospel and country - as well as the Celtic soul of his north of London upbringing.

Robins richly invokes the 1960s' youth explosion in Roll Back The Years, with its meaty, beaty Hammond organ and mod-pop leanings, but this album is no paean to long gone days, far from it. More representative are the bluesy, harp-touting Comfort Zone, the Latino-Celtic lyrical references and hushed tones of Walking In Silence and the crafty flute playing tidy counterpoint to Robins' searching vocals on The Heights of Abraham.

The title track showcases his lyrical ability - again invoking the spirit of Van, maybe even Dylan - with references to Ahab, Noah and captains of the sea like Irish pirate queen Grace O'Malley and the great explorers Samuel de Champlain, Columbus and Vasco Da Gama. The lyrics solicit history in the same way as Robins' music, at once conscious of a rich past but wary of becoming bogged down by it.

He again demonstrates perfectly judged restraint and good taste by infusing A Letter From Paris with just enough Left Bank jazz to lend it a sense of place without being troubled by pastiche; equally the album's tour-de-force, Drown in Your Eyes, deftly plots a careful course through the jagged rocks of soul cliché to emerge as a thoroughly endearing love song from a man old enough to know there's no point trying to better the best.

Nick Churchill

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