Reviews
September Song Album: the Perfect View
Label: Sons Of Art
Tracks: 11
Website: https://www.sons-of-art.com/
A Bristol-based duo comprising Steve Hogg and John Douglass, this, their third, is a somewhat belated follow-up to 2022's 'Two Miles Out', and, among other local musicians, features Portishead bassist Jim Barr, pianist Paul Quinn and Jerry Crozier-Cole on mandolin, flute and electric guitar.
Musically ranging across a variety of styles and sounds (touchstones would include McCartney and Brian Wilson), but mostly anchored in alternative pop, featuring Ruth Ayika Ankrah and Sally Larkin on backing vocals, it kicks off with the strummed five-minute plus self-explanatory 'Hope' conjuring thoughts of Simon & Garfunkel, taking a turn into soaring vocal 70s ballad territory with the swayalong 'I Cry For You', the opening lines "You shit on my dreams, destroy everything" serving notice that the lyrics often belie the more upbeat musical settings. Another case in point is the brass-coloured, lightly jazzed 'Hey John' with its mental health undercurrent as they ask "what the fucking hell is it all about?". Likewise, the bouncy, keys-led 'Pray For Me' comes with a spoken passages that start by declaring "Lying in bed this morning I felt unable to move, frozen with fear" before fantasising about killing a neighbour accusatorily asking after a missing cat.
Given a Latin jazzy sway (vaguely reminiscent of 'Mack The Knife'), 'It's Not Me Now' has Holly Carter's pedal steel colouring between the lines, the Latin colours spilling over to flood the calypsoish 'Porto Bound' with its Portuguese guitar and brass. A funkier jazz groove approach (complete with an "it's natural thing" R&B refrain) is taken for the (overlong) seven-minute sax-stroked 'One Good Summer', the album heading to a close with the chugging pub piano pop 'All Alone', piano ballad 'Invincible' where Hogg brings his best 'Imagine' Lennon phrasing and pitch and, again with pedal steel, the railway riding rhythm of the country jaunty 'Don't You Know My Name' (inspired by Lindisfarne's Alun Hull and referencing his The Winter Song'). It ends with the dreamy swaying 'Beautiful World', the lyrics referring back to 'Pray For Me' where struggles with sleeping are replaced by struggles with dreaming on a sax-tinted song that muses on how we ignore the beauty around us. Take in the view.
Mike Davies
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