Reviews
Artist:Grace Petrie Album: The House Always Wins
Label: The Robot Needs Home Collective
Tracks: 11
Website: https://www.gracepetrie.com/
Having finally made her album chart debut with 2021's Connectivity, Petrie's looking to repeat the feat with this new collection of the personal and the political. It's perhaps less stacked with barricade storming anthems, but her ability to marry a crowd friendly folk rock melody and hook with thoughtful lyrics in undimmed.
Produced by and featuring Frank Turner variously contributing bass, electric guitar, percussion with Stuart Provan on drums and Ben Moss providing fiddle, melodeon and mandolin, it kicks off in sterling Celtic-tinged style and skirl with 'The Best Country In The World' that laments the decline of the nation from the days when "In my primary school assembly/I sang with folded hands/Of green and pleasant lands/Where I was made" to today where, post-Brexit, "we turn from compassion/Leave our fellows out to die…We must keep all for ourselves/Our super markets' empty shelves/Our overcrowded prison cells/Our classrooms crumbling to bits/Striking doctors striking teachers/And no railway lines to reach us/And we would fight them on the beaches/But the beach is full of shit" in the now cruel Britannia.
Fiddle swirl and invective stride down a similar path on 'The House Always Wins' as old boys' club political corruption lines up in her sights through the metaphorical lens of a rigged casino ("the dice is always loaded/The coins all wear two grins/The devil pays the dealer for his multitude of sins/But whichever way the roulette wheel spins/The house always wins") and the suckers ready to be taken for a ride ("The first thing they teach at Eton is to recognise a mark/They don't come any easier than desperate in the dark/A little smoke and mirrors and you've got them on the hook").
'King And Country' takes the pace down to a circling acoustic strum coloured by harmonica but keeps the image of a broken Albion sharp ("The bailiffs have knocked down a family's door/The oil profits soar/Some teenagers have blocked the motorway/We locked them all away…A carpet of dead shellfish washed ashore/Bad luck and nothing more/Another boat of refugees went down/Let's talk about pronouns/Have you considered sleeping in your coats/ At least we stopped the boats").
Todd Beene joining on pedal steel guitar as drums and fiddle kick back in, the protest scope wides to take in the overturning of Roe vs Wade in America and the abortion crackdown by far right ultra-conservatives on 'Meanwhile In Texas', where "Known abusers, never caught Snatched the rights for which we fought/And now their word is law" as "Another rape survivor flees the state/And meanwhile in Texas/Girls are gonna die", sounding the warning that "when they come for some of our rights/All the rest are next in line" as it ends with a call to stop the infighting "So rise up, and use your voice…When that front line stand is made/Look around at who stands with you/When you meet that barricade/It won't be fundamentalists/Out protesting the word cis/Yeah when we tear each other down/The winners are misogynists".
With just fingerpicked guitar and keys, 'Next Episode Starts' speaks of anxiety and psychological retreat in the face of gathering darkness ("Get a shrink/Get a gym/Pick yourself a god and get right with Him") and a numbing of empathy ("Maybe it's you; but maybe it's/A functioning reaction to apocalypse… Just turn your head/And look away/Suffering and pain they happen every day/If any if your plates drop and there'll be hell to pay/Just find something to get you through the day… You wish you didn't care/If caring this much might just break you").
It's aptly followed by the keys-bolstered circling melody 'Start Again' with its theme of support and resilience, a memory of what almost was ("For a minute there it could be seen/The people that we could have been/Yeah in the crowds of everyone/I thought I saw a world to come/I saw another Albion") and of a drive to resurrect the dream ("when you're lost at sea/And when you're on your knees/And when all you see/Is the world just fall apart again/Look for me/Honey there I'll be/Yeah and piece by piece/We'll pick it right back up and start again… we weren't meant to be alone/Even as this barren state/Tries to turn your fear to hate/Blank pages of our history wait/It's not too late").
Framed around the circling folksy melody line with mandolin and electric guitar, 'Earthwire' is lovely gigging musician's number about leaving a part of you behind when it's time to take to the road "To offer up this pockmarked heart for viewing/Pick it over til I am bereft" as she sings "I leave behind the nest/We made so reticently/But through all tomorrow brings/For all our magpie wings/Being yours is the best I can be/When I'm bound for city and sea/When I'm bound for town/By my anchor, be my rudder/Darling, earth me to the ground/And I'll be home before the leaves fall down",
Namechecking Joan Armatrading, kick beat drums lead off 'Cynicism Free', another love song, albeit unexpected ("Said that I was done with love songs/No more fairytales and shooting stars/Only to turn into jagged battle scars/Thought that I would be forever/ Wandering this world all on my own /Following the sunset like a rolling stone/But… since I rolled in to your path/All the colours burned more bright/And now I'm staring down the barrel of this big blue sky"), finding herself in a relationship where "It's like being on the dancefloor one AM/When they play Like a Prayer". As such it's beguiling followed by the disarmingly tender, brief solo acoustic fingerpicked 'If I Were To Outlive You' with its mother hen list of worries ("Please triple check the traffic/Before stepping from the edge/Please never miss a smear test/Please get organic veg/Please never eat a mouthful/Of something that's expired/Please never swim in riptides/Please never drive too tired") as she ends with the wry "If I were to outlive you/I'd never forgive you".
It ends back in musically rousing, fiddle surging social commentary state of the world mode, first with 'Fixer Upper' that begins with memories of waking up in June 2016 to a "far right, fake news, fucked up universe" and of it all just getting worse "As doomsdays clocks and Tiktoks say we're running out of time". But, chiming the renovation title, hope and determination prevail ("I think this world's a fixer-upper/Broken in the middle of a salvage yard…I know it will be hard/And maybe I'm delusional/But I think it could be beautiful/If we could only keep from losing heart/We might still/Have time to build /Something better from the parts"). So "grab a spade yeah grab a hammer/Plant some seeds and raise a banner/Roll your sleeves and rake the leaves/Let by the passing storm/Boil the kettle build a movement/ Every day some small improvement… The saplings laid by other folks/We will turn into mighty oaks". Bill Blake would have approved.
It ends with quiet anger and a gathering musical swell, reflectively again turning the lens on life in a collapsing contemporary England ("You can't hide the cracks with a Union Jack") and a note of questioning satire on what 'English Culture' has come to mean and feeling a stranger to it ("Is English culture drinking til you can't stand up alone? Is this my home?/Is English culture old folks freezing in their homes alone? Is this my home?/Is English culture letting desperate people sink like stones? Is this my home?"). Is, she asks, "gambling in the city and the mortgage payments triple overnight/And braying in the commons like it's all just a debating exercise/And targeting the weakest just to try and keep the wool over our eyes/And spreading this division supposed to give me national pride?" The final line is "I can't eat that". This album is nutrition for a faltering soul.
Mike Davies
| Previous | Next |
|---|---|
| Johnny Campbell: True North | Ciran Ryan Band: Occupational Hazards |
Recent Reviews
- The Clarkes And Co:Save the Pangolin and Nine Other Love Stories
- Surrender Hill:Wild Country
- Simon Kempston:A Poet Or A Painter
- Kate MacLeod's Mind The Gap:Home Brewed
- Jason McNiff:10 Blue Songs
- Greg Hancock:Words Of Wisdom
- Chris Clark:Across A Carnival
- Adam Beattie:Home Fires Burning
- sundayclub:sundayclub
- The Lost Notes:Live At Symphony Hall
The House Always Wins
Fatea Showcase Sessions
The Fatea Showcase Sessions are a series of downloads featuring acts that we've really enjoyed and think that more people should get the chance to hear.
Corsair is the current session and features 16 fantastic artists check out the website to find out more about them and download your copy
www.fatea-showcase-sessions.co.uk for all the artist information.