Reviews

Ady Johnson
Album: Under Gainsborough Skies
Label: Little Robin
Tracks: 10
Website: https://www.adyjohnson.co.uk

Taking its title from the fact that Johnson's hometown is Sudbury in Suffolk is also the birthplace of 18th century landscape painter Thomas Gainsborough, this is Johnson's third album, recorded with a minimalist 'live in the studio' approach where less is more.

It opens with the circling fingerpicked notes of 'Foolin' Around (With You)', the opening line also the album's title, the song , its single line piano part taking its cue from Nick Drake's 'Pink Moon', imagining its protagonist reflecting on an "Arcadian dream" past romance while in a typical Gainsborough bucolic setting and comparing himself to the subject of the famous 1770 painting The Blue Boy.

Johnson also has a parallel career restoring antique furniture, serving his apprenticeship at his grandparents' furniture restoration business, they gifting him the Regency child's chair that's the subject of 'The Old Child's Chair', the song, which features Toby Bull on recorder (and oddly reminding me of both Simon and Garfunkel's 'Feelin' Groovy' and Dylan's 'Girl From The North Country'), musing on what to do with it now he's passed his prime to carry on the family line, maybe put it up for auction but deciding to wax it up and make it shine, the line "I wonder if I'd see you in me/Worrisome or free-wheeling?/Humble or a household name/Either way I would love you all the same" carrying its generational subtext.

Using a Copperphone mic for the backing vocals to evoke a vintage sound reminiscent of the early 1900s and with Bell on flugelhorn, 'My Honeydew', another laid back circular fingerpicked number with whispery pastoral vocals and a jazzy flavour is a sweetly whimsical imagining of a naval officer gazing affectionately at his sleeping daughter ("By the light of the moon I gaze upon you/Oh I wonder what I'd do should I lose you/I would drift like a boat without oars or sails/Without a tiller to steer me through life's travails").

With vague blues and ragtime shades, 'O For A Time Machine' is friskier itchy melody with high pitched vocals, classical guitar, handclaps and stomps as the singer, own up to his mistakes and wishes he could go back and start over ("fulfil your dreams/Build a brand new home/There'd be no reason to roam") but reminding his partner "that it takes two to tango?/Please bare this in mind/Before you cast another stone".

Scott Matthews contributing ethereal backing vocals, 'Wash Away, Blow Away' with its rolling arpeggio guitar is his lockdown song ("All alone with just a tablet of stone/In this house that's not my own"), wishing for a breeze or rain to sweep away the pandemic, fading away to give rise to fingerpicked, flugelhorn-coloured acoustic blues 'The Runner', inspired by his time living in South East London and going running (though the song's subject is female) through the Victorian Nunhead Cemetery with its ruined Gothic chapel, overgrown tombstones and headless statures in the undergrowth, and a metaphor for confronting and/or running away from our fears ("Taunting from trees/"Oh, you may run but your time will run out/Your torch will snuff out"/But the runner keeps on running/Through the open gates …she never looks back".

If that hints at mortality, the rhythmically dappled and choppy 'Swing By' draws on his fascination with near death experiences and has him imagining popping over to the other side for the night to see his nan ("I'd pull up a pew, slip off my shoes/You'd ask me to tell you all about it/Like you used to/We'd sip your tea and we'd chew the fat").

Talking of whom, inspired by folk revival guitarists such as Bert Jansch and Davy Graham, the 66-second fingerpicked instrumental 'Little B' is dedicated to her, the title a nod to how she called him Little A and how she's saw B instead of swearing. It is, naturally, in the key of B.

Also very much in the folk revival style with its good timing walking rhythm, whistling and handclaps, 'Sleepy Dog' touches on rich and poor social divide commentary ("You've got a castle/High upon the hill …It's a weekend home/Do you look down/On our street below?") being about a homeless gent ("my home's just got one wall/And my bed's a concrete floor… I'm a lost cause, or so I'm told") who, having lost his love now just has his faithful canine companion.

Rev Simpkins on piano and dedicated to his late friend Jewels Johnson ("you stopped answering calls/Now I regret not knocking on your door …Your legacy lives on through words and song/And even though it's made me cry /You'd encourage me to write/So, I'll carry on with peace of mind"), it ends with the scratchy acoustic blues 'Friends To The End', the title the caption on a birthday card she'd sent him, the line "for there is no true end" an agnostic's hope for a life eternal. Arguably one that you have to live with for a while to fully surrender to its simple charms, but, like the Gainsborough, the brush strokes are gorgeous.

Mike Davies

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