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Nigel Stonier Nigel Stonier
Album: Wolf Notes
Label: APM
Tracks: 12
Website: https://www.nigelstonier.com/

His first album in six years (though he's been busy producing), the title referring to the howl that comes from stringed instruments when the player hits a note that is close to a resonant frequency of the instrument's body, this has Stonier in strikingly commercial form without ever dumbing the music down. Featuring sons Egan and Asher on violin and drums, respectively, and Natalie Grace Kelsey on whistle and flute, it opens with the Celtic-flavoured sway of 'Don't Lose Songs', that says you can lose motivation, inspiration and lovers, but you should hold fast to music which has the power to bring you through all those darknesses and keep hope and who you are alive.

Lindisfarne's Rod Clements brings his lead guitar to join Ian Thompson on upright bass for the loping junkyard bluesy 'The New Alright', an irony-veined pisstake at the expense of the new macho ("I'm going the distance I'll be in at the death/I got fire in my belly, beer on my breath… He's a difficult man to classify/There's so much less to him than meets the eye/But he'll go to the wire, he's your go to guy") that manages to mention both Lady Marmalade and Lady Macbeth and, in the lines "There's a fear in the market and the line descends/There's a blue suit working through the odds and ends" seems to have foreseen the Trump tariffs fiasco.

A punky romp driving at an urgent pace and featuring Rob Harris of Jamiroquai on guitar, 'That's Why God Made Tribute Bands' turns its attention to contemporary shallowness where "We get the pop stars we deserve" and "It's just supply, just demand/It's budget flights to no man's land" as "Tragedy comes back as farce" in a world where "There's a TV personality without a personality/And a household name who doesn't make a living". Aside from a sly allusion to Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb' it brilliantly sums up the 21st century banality where we "lie back and think of Poundland" and "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern/Will morph straight into Ant and Dec".

C.J. Hillman on guitar, things mellow down with the circling acoustic notes 'That's Where You'll Be', a touching ode to those who we have lost ("I started a song and it went "Why you?/Then I started another saying "We all catch that train..."/The shadow's there for all men and women/The great divide, the mystery/Heading out way over yonder") and the memories we hold to keep them with us and the legacies they leave behind ("In the laughter of your children/That's where you'll be/And in the laughter of their children/That's where you'll be").

There's a touch of Ronnie Lane's Slim Chance to the steady handclap march rhythm, harmonica and cascading chorus chords of 'You Still Have Faith In Me' the musical imagery of the lyrics of which ("You are the tone and the change in tempo/You are the switch to the major key/Even the bad days they pass by quicker/You still have faith in me") pretty much speak for themselves. Whether it's a song to a lover, God or music itself.

Reaching the mid-point, Egan's violin (and viola) is back in the frame alongside Hillman's pedal steel and Ben Cashell on cello for the title track which, melodically very reminiscent of David McWilliams' 'Days Of Pearly Spencer' uses the musical phenomenon ("the broken chord that resonates/That sometimes soothes and sometimes grates") as a metaphor for how "Love turns up when uninvited/Not in sequence not on cue", the lyric namechecking Debussy, Tom Waits, Van Gogh and Jesus as well as subtly referencing Dylan and Hamlet.

Much of the album was written during lockdown ("I re-read some words of yours/About a camel's back and a straw/You like to downplay, but it's plain as day/We've seen nothing like this before") and, again with violin and cello, that defiant resilience is there in the rippling and puttering notes of 'Get Through' with its tribute to the beleaguered /NHS ("Can you hear Nye's baby cry/Do you hear her groan beneath the weight/Do you hear the applause from verandas and front doors/So beautiful and so late" and those on the frontline "in the eye of the storm" and the belief that "this too shall pass".

There's a touch of mountain music country to the appropriately chugging word rush of 'Train Called Inspiration' which echoes the same theme as Wolf Notes in how "There's moments in a lucky life/Where stars and wheels collide/Lightning strikes, lightning hits/Fortune offers you a ride" and manages to throw in mentions of The Mystery Jets , Harriett Tubman and Casey Jones as it rattles the rails with "travelling companions plenty/Most of whom get on your nerves/The dancers and the chancers/Tortured souls and dying swans/The losers, the confusers/The poster boys, the born plus ones".

A co-write with Steve Wickham of The Waterboys and featuring Clements on dobro, 'Soul' is a laid back swayer about not being one of those tribute band wannabes that again calls on musical imagery as he sings "a wing and a prayer can only get you so far, if you don't have the soul you don't get the gig" because "The whistle alone/Can't carry the jig".

A choppy 70s-shaded blues with harmonica and Harris on lead, 'Alright' with its staccato lyrics ("New day new script/Plot twist check list reboot rewrite") returns to that unexpected flash of luck that puts everything back on track ("I got your hand in mine and I like how it feels… You got a heart that's true and strong/You came through and you made it better/Before I even figured it was going wrong").

It comes to a close with, first, 'Path Of Green', Egan's opening violin setting the tone for the Irish colours in which it's painted and the message about a steady endurance against the storms ("I walk it slow and steady/My feet can take their time… Today it's not the steps you take/Today it's not the miles you cover/Today it's just the one foot/You're putting in front of the other") and of how a simple act of kindness can keep the world spinning round and while a as a self-confessed "born again agnostic" he sings "I thank powers unseen/It was a crooked mile/Now it's a path of green".

That faith and hope come together for the closing keyboard-anchored , rhythmically steadfast 'I Believe (Love Can Save Your Life'), the lyric a list of positive affirmations ("I believe in redemption/I believe in change/I believe we can start each day with a brand new page/I believe that you need the tears/Before the laughter…I believe when a new day dawns/There's hope in the morning light…I believe in the hurt/I believe in the pain/But I believe in healing and the power to start again").

A contender for the year's best of lists, he definitely gets the gig

Mike Davies

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