Reviews

Artist:Anton O'Donnell
Album: Tomber Sur PRW
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 9
Website: https://www.aodonnell.bandcamp.com/

A solo album by the frontman for Glasgow outfit Anton & The Colts, this follows up Forty Is The New Thirty, a collection of home recordings released earlier in the year as a stopgap, three studio reworks of which appear here. The title, which translates as 'Falling On PRW', as in Paisley Road West where he lives, came from a line in Je Ne Sais Quoi, a song off his 2021 EP Where Art Thou April, though the concept behind it relates to the burden of struggling with modern life, falling for the noise it makes as opposed to a woman.

It kicks off with the steady strummed six-minute 'Kindness', O'Donnell's gravel and whisky gargling voice backed by pedal steel, electric piano and congas, gradually gathering power as it proceeds, the Shiny Souls Sisters (Kelley MicKwee and Alice Spencer) lending their harmonies as he sings "I think the boys at the wheel straightening up their ties as they deal in blood were dragged up without kindness. All the flunkies and aggressors with their guns by their side doing as they're told were dragged up without kindness. Could be a sinner or a saint, destitute or a prince, it don't cost much to show kindness", pretty much summing up what it's about.

Maintaining the musical intensity and lyrical power, 'Skulduggery', initially to be called 'A Day in the life: Under Occupation' and one of the fleshed out demos, addresses the way mainstream media portrays conflict around the world ("I pushed the dirt off from my chest, and pulled myself from a shallow grave, I saw my son laying dead in a ditch…in a suit with blood under his nails, hiding behind a lie that he sells on a billion TV's, hide your eyes or you'll catch the decease, no you feel no god around here, just the devil in man"), the narrative often one-sided,

Taking it down a notch or two, pedal steel keening, the Americana flavoured 'Roots' was written in lockdown born from frustration at the antipathy shown to the ordinary folk by those in power ("these seats are preserved for thieves, was the writing always on the wall/The old guard, this damned house of cards, ancient ruins are there to remind"). It's his love of Americana that also fuels 'Dreams Fade Under The Weight', another of the demos resurrected for the album and featuring Rob Ickes on dobro, Eamon McLoughlin on fiddle and mandolin with background vocals by Shannon Hynes, the title again succinctly embodying the disillusionment of a struggling musician ("Dreams of marquee lights and high-end shows, sold for bar room days with nothing to show/Though your dreams fade under the weight, you never did plan it out that way, from the cradle to the grave, it's easy to get lost in the race… Been doing the best that you can do, with three young ones and daddy's been gone for a while, you never seem to find an excuse to paint on your smile, and your love of dancing's been dead for some time").

Another of the fruits of lockdown, the lyrics written some years earlier after a bad dream and revisited after reading of a young man's suicide, the moody fingerpicked 'Shine A Light' with Mai Bloomfield on cello and Dennis Crouch's upright bass, looks to offer a shoulder and an ear to those being overwhelmed with the darkness ("Sit down by me for a while, we'll break down the walls by this fire, tell me what's going on trial, we'll chop it right up by this flame/I know there's shadows you can't explain, there's a ghost in every house I've been told, there's no need to exorcise it alone, we'll shine a light and call out its name").

A similar sentiment informs the rockier driving 'It Never Lasts', a carpe diem number featuring slide and mandolin written in memory of an old friend' who always used to say "Just go for it kid, yer a long time time deid", and that the bad times will eventually pass, or as the song has it "Let your candle burn any which way that you can/There ain't no end of the line and the rain don't ever last…I'll bet you double quits the good times will swing on back around, like a dreich Scottish winter you know that shit never lasts, no it never lasts".

Yet another lockdown number, the piano-based 'Set It On Fire' was spurred by the government blaming the public for the spread of the virus rather than themselves for keeping the airports open as Italy collapsed in chaos, the opening line "the news keeps picking on my fears, no one's safe and no one cares, no one's safe and no one cares" as timely now as then.

Now any folk-influenced album needs to have a least one reference to murder, seduction and drink, so please welcome, with a trumpet flourish, the swaggering 'Madman on the Loose' ("He's been on the run for 4 days straight, he cleaned out the bank took every penny he's made, he's heading for the coast of the motherland where no one knows his name/Fake moustache and big black shades, he straightened and trimmed the curls his mother gave, he's looking a bit like Benicio del Toro in his younger days") with its cautionary advice of not to hook up with some girl from a bar when you're on the run ("Some things you should never do while on the run, let the little man do the thinking get yourself all undone, the road's hot enough when you're on the chase under the Mexican sun/An inquisitive girl so she was, shooting out all sorts of questions looking for a confession, when Jose's head slipped and gave up the ghost of all his indiscretions…so he shot that motor-mouth just as you do, he dumped her in a ditch and then he rolled on down to Boca del Rio").

If that conjures up thoughts of 'Natural Born Killers', then the final track, 'Django', the third demo revisit and again with upright bass and fiddle, was a direct result of watching Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' and wondering what would have happened if Broomhilda was killed by Monsieur Candie in Candyland, envisaging Django going on a rampage, killing all the slave owners, and shooting his way through the South in a rage until he's forgotten why he was so angry in the first place - "Many pimps, outlaws and enemies have died by your hand on this trail/They'll live in your shadow, it's a trade-off that had to be made/The Mexican standoff you face down at dawn is just you, and the devil within…Now the time has come, come in out the rain and take off your guns/Sometimes the fire needs to rage before a new day is dawned".

In French, 'tomber sur' is actually a colloquialism for chancing on or coming across something by accident. You should definitely tomber sur this.

Mike Davies

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