Reviews

Artist:Adrian Glynn
Album: You're Just A Place That I Know
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: https://www.adrianglynn.com/

Frontman with Canadian outfit The Fugitives, armed with guitar, banjo, balalaika and piano, the Canadian-Ukrainian singer steps out solo (albeit with Iraqi-born transgender drummer Sally Zori, 2SLGBTQI bassist Catherine Hiltz, Manitoba born actress-violinist Marlene Ginader, and backing singer Chelsea Rose with fellow Canadian-Ukraine guests Ruta Yawney on bandura, a 55 string lute-like instrument and the national instrument of Ukraine, Beverly Dobrinsky on lira, a form of hurdy gurdy and Tom Dobrzanski on organ) for an album that, as recounted by Teta Genya, the story-keeper of his family's Ukrainian heritage forms a song cycle about his late grandparents, his "Baba" and "Dido", who, met in a displaced persons camp in Austria after surviving Germany's Ukrainian occupation in the 1940s, before eventually emigrating to Montreal together with their first-born child. As such, it's an album rooted in memory, alternatively blurry and clear, the title embodying the idea in its shifting forms.

It opens with the strum of 'When I Close My Eyes', sung in the voice of his Baba recollecting how, at 17 and living with her parents and sisters in their Carpathian village, she was kidnapped by German soldiers and eventually consigned to forced labour some 600 miles away. Continuing the story, handclaps open and drive the marching beat 'I Will Wait to Hear From You' which, with its backing vocals chorus, has her mother awaiting news ("I'll make it through, I'll hear from you, out of the blue/Some afternoon") coming to an abrupt end on the line "when the armies leave all their spirits at our doors".

His grandparents met at a Displaced Persons camp in Austria near the end of the war where they remained for over two years, marrying and having their first daughter. Opening with whistling and to a strummed guitar and bandura, the wistful 'Dancing For The Soldiers' recalls how his Dido used to do folk dances for the guards, who would throw him cigarettes which he would then sell, the song imaging his wife to be watching and falling in love ("I saw you dancing for the soldiers, though I dreamed that it was me/I'd have flowers all in garlands and embroiders down my sleeve/And you'd dash my heart wide open like there were roses in your teeth/You'd bring the planets closer and you would lift me from my feet/And in the morning glow you'd be beside me in my sleep") as it gathers to a clap and swayalong.

Again with a handclap rhythm, 'Best Things' sees them and their "little crawlin' angel" move from Europe to Montreal (not New York, as intended - "That famous distant statue, she wasn't meant to be"), Dido armed with letters written in French from some Jewish men on the ship who told him to head for the French quarter where, as a trained tailor, he could get work, the lyric referencing a scar on his hand from a self-inflicted bullet wound to avoid serving with the Nazis in Ukraine, a reminder that "the best things always wait".

And, like them, the album fetches up in 'Montreal', from when the title line comes, accompanied by piano and trying to adjust to their new life, not sure if they're accepted or not ("We meet your gaze but we pass like strangers in the fog/Are you learning our names or are you taking favours/Counting the days till we're gone"), holding on to a "golden vision" as the strings soar and drums putter in. It may just be me, but I felt a touch of Meatloaf about it.

Picking up the tempo with propulsive drums and guitar lines, now with three daughters to care for, the poppier 'Lionize' has Baba torn between memories of the past ("I still remember everything, the white pine wood and quiet lake/Halfway through my mother's gate, another breath out of my memory bank") and the responsibilities of the present ("Tiny bones in tiny hands and they pull me through the looking glass").

Bookended by two brief self-explanatory instrumentals ('Lira' and 'Bandura'), the slow, intimately sung, steady chugging 'I Won't Sleep' with its rippling banjo and harmonica solo is a love song from his grandmother to his grandfather as the years gather on them ("And if I grow a little slower/I know you will wait for me") with its lovely chorus of "I won't sleep until I'm here beside the sound of your breathing/I won't rest until you lay inside the curve of my chest".

The piano accompanied title track itself has Baba bidding her husband farewell at the end of his life, thanking him "For all the light that you showed me/For all of the stars in your eyes/For all of the places we'll never see/For all that we left behind/For every thought where you hold me/For every night you were here with me/For the life that you gave to our family" as, swathed in strings, the Windsor Secondary Choir sings a Ukrainian stanza from 'Dumy Moye', an old folk song by the Ukrainian poet/folk hero, Taras Shevchenko.

It comes to close with 'Generations', a poignant initially unaccompanied number that takes both his and his grandmother's perspective, flipping through an old photo album and her memories for the last time as she lies in a Montreal hospital room with dementia, he, as the title suggests, seeing himself mirrored in her as a drone and skittering rhythmic hand percussion take it to the final note.

A hugely personal and profoundly moving collection of song and memories concerning identity and heritage that resonates far beyond its specific context, it's a place you really should get to know.

Mike Davies

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