Martyn Joseph
Album: Being There/Martyn Joseph
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 22
Website: http://www.martynjoseph.net

Even if you've been following Martyn's career keenly over the past decades, you'll have been hard pressed to keep up with the plethora of discs he's released over that period, on a bewildering multiplicity of labels with variable or indifferent availability especially in the pre-Pipe days. I'm not sure quite how this latest reissue has come about, but congratulations to Talking Elephant on securing the rights to releasing this pair of titles that originally came out on the Epic label in 1992 and 1995 respectively. Being There has, I believe, been reissued on CD once before by Sony, but to my recollection this Talking Elephant release marks the eponymous MJ album's first reissue These two albums contain several of the best of the "songs of lyrical intelligence" penned by this classy singer-songwriter, and the oft-quoted tag of "Welsh Springsteen" can be heard at its most persuasive here, on the sequences of perceptive observational vignettes and tough and passion-driven social commentaries, typically written and sung from the underdog's point of view, accentuated by the equivalently tight, robust 90s band backings from reliable musos like Pete Brooks, John Leventhal, Bill Dillon, Mo Foster, Charlie Morgan and Tim Harries. Thinking back, via a borrowed copy of the Being There album is probably how I first encountered exceptional songs like Working Mother, Please Sir, Swansea and Dolphins Make Me Cry, all of which made such a vivid impression both then and still do now.

The production on the eponymous MJ album occasionally steered the band arrangements further into the customary late-90s quest for "accessibility", and I find parts of this set slightly less repeatable for that very reason, where the settings to some extent threatened to submerge the lyric power of the more thoughtful songs such as Home To You, If I Should Fall and Between The Raindrops, although the muscular riff and thrust of the backing for Gift To Me suited its style better and the quintessential domestic drama Let's Talk About It In The Morning probably works either way. But Cardiff Bay will always be one of Martyn's most priceless compositions, and the pared-down setting it receives here is especially satisfying.

OK, a fair number of the songs from both of these records have reappeared on subsequent MJ releases, notably on live sets, but it's still good to hear these early renditions occasionally and appreciate the context of these more consciously-arranged musical settings (which, to their credit, don't ever feel overblown). Although personally I will always still much prefer to experience Martyn in close-up live performance mode, where the sheer intensity, dynamism and unbridled involving passion he brings to every song (even on what must be the umpteenth repeat!) is miraculous. The different kind of intimacy conjured by Being There's lone acoustic-guitar-with-strings number, Precious, is absolutely lovely too, of course.

As far as presentation is concerned, Talking Elephant have done an exemplary job here, not least in reproducing the full lyrics and personnel credits in the booklet. No question that these albums are to be heartily welcomed back into catalogue..

David Kidman