Tom Yates
Album: Love Is Losing Ground
Label: Epona
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.eponarecords.com

We're now getting the missing pieces in the jigsaw that was singer-songwriter Tom Yates (born Rochdale 1944, died Antwerp 1993). The Epona label's remastered reissues of Tom's second and third LPs Love Comes Well Armed and Song Of The Shimmering Way have already been reviewed on this site (April this year), so you can refer to those reviews to get the basic biog and history, together with commentary and useful reference points.

Love Is Losing Ground post-dates 1977's Song Of The Shimmering Way by at least six years. To all intents and purposes, it's Tom's fourth album, although its tracks are drawn from tapes recorded in Antwerp in various small studios and at various times between 1983 and 1988. Poor-condition original recordings these are generally, and cassette tape has never been an ideal medium for permanent or hi-fi storage, but these have been surprisingly well transferred to the digital medium (by Tom's old friend John Constantine) for CD release here, only occasionally displaying the flakiness or flutter that betrays the cassette source.

The songs themselves embody the preoccupations of the thinking man of the 80s, and their perceptiveness is as prophetic as it of its time (the title track provides good evidence of this, although its recording quality is among the worst here, sadly). Tom's performing style is as appealing on these recordings as it was in the 70s, and some of these 80s tracks have the melodic facility and general air of Gerry Rafferty's output of the time. Perhaps the most memorable songs here are the strange 1988 opus Amid The Alien Corn, the Eyal Aharon home-studio take of Wild Track, and A Song Of Sable Night, but in truth Tom's lyrics are always worthy of scrutiny and his gift for melodic invention never strays (although it can sometimes take a few listens for the magic to work).

The varying guitar stylings used during the course of the collection also help to maintain listener interest. OK, I wasn't especially taken with some of the slightly sickly keyboard work (very typical 80s) or the over-the-top, over-synthed setting bestowed on the soaring, uplifting Mishka Madou, while one song (Jacques Brel) was impenetrable (most likely due to its being sung in Dutch!), but overall this set of performances of songs mostly written in Belgium makes as good a case as can be made for re-release (and continued availability) of this material.

David Kidman