Blueflint
Album: Stories From Home
Label: Johnny Rock
Tracks: 11
Website: http://blueflint.org.uk/

Open the CD cover of Blueflint's latest album, Stories from Home, and you are confronted, I think this is the only word, with a photograph of Leith's famous 'Banana Flats'. The flats are a prime example of the ugly, brutal 1960s architecture that blighted so many northern towns. Hundreds of identical flats stretch across the photograph in long curving concrete block. This is the place that was the backdrop of the film 'Trainspotting' and there is much of the same gritty realism and dark humour in Blueflint's album.

At the heart of Blueflint are the wonderfully matched voices of Clare Neilson and Deborah Arnott who have, between them, written all the songs on this album. Both are also fine banjo players and for this album they have gathered around themselves a five piece band that adds double bass, guitar, drums, fiddle, piano and xylophone to the mix.

The songs themselves cast an unblinking gaze upon the lives of those who live in places like the Leith flats. The first song 'King of my Apple Tree' charts the end of a relationship with almost forensic detachment. There is no sentimentality here, little sympathy but a whole load of real compassion.

This is followed by 'Little Stranger', a song from a young mother to her new baby. With its happy, bouncing banjo accompaniment, it is easy to imagine this song being sung by a mother dancing around the room with her child in her arms.

There's also a wry humour that flashes through the lyrics. The song 'This is a Story' tells of moving to London in search of a better life, failing and having to move back, but of a couple staying together through all the disappointment and heartache. Yet amongst his tale of broken dreams are the lyrics 'You're squashing my face as you're trying to sleep / My nose at an angle and it's hard to breathe'. The whole album is shot through with moments like this; honest, clear-eyed but able to see the humour in some fairly grim situations.

'Hawk and Eagle', the eighth track on the album, has a distinctly American feel to it with a particularly powerful performance from Ali Murray on drums. The album ends with the spare and bitter-sweet song, 'Don't Make A Fool Out Of Me'.

Leith's concrete architecture is about as far away from the vision of folk music as a reflection of the rural idyll as it is possible to get. Yet in a very real sense this is what folk music is about; music about everyday life and everyday concerns. Blueflint give this music life and veracity. They bring out the soul of a soulless environment and give voice to a thousand humdrum lives. Yet, despite the subject matter, this is far from being a depressing album. On the contrary. This is a life-affirming piece, full of fantastic lyrics, great musicianship and more than a few wry smiles.

Tim Goodwin