Sean Taylor
Album: Love Against Death
Label: SGO
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.seantaylorsongs.com

There are few artists whom I can genuinely say have improved with every album they've delivered, Sean Taylor is one of the few. Ok, so it's a task that can be easily achieved if you start from a low base and have only recorded two albums. I'm coming from a four album minimum and "Love Against Death" is Sean's fifth. As for the base, his sophomore album "Angels" was our album of the year, back in 2007.

Sean is a prolific songwriter, producing roughly an album a year for the last five or so years. What is remarkable about his recordings is the way he seems to be able to revisit them, extract and build on the highlights and lose the chaff that you didn't notice when it was still fresh. Even more remarkable, he seems to do it in such a way that he doesn't devalue the original recordings. By that I mean there's a vast difference in sound between his debut "Corrugations" and the current "Love Against Death", but the former doesn't seem to have dated, it's just different.

Sean's album have tended to be about people, places and politics, with the current album being his most overtly political. If there is theme that runs through this album, it's that sense of personal and social freedom and the erosion of those freedoms in the name of capitalism. How the bailouts that weren't there when the free market was about coal and steel, but are paid for by the poor when the free market is banking. How we can change the terms and conditions for teachers, nurses and bin men, but not corporate bankers in state owned banks.

Even the only cover on "Love Against Death", "Sixteen Tons" reflects the theme of exploitation of the working man by the rich, albeit from a different era. Sean has chosen to interpret the song in a very different style from most versions I've heard. To be honest, the first time I heard it, it didn't work for me, in a way that only a take on something familiar can seem so alien when it's changed, it's taken a while, but now the vibe behind it all makes sense.

You've always been able to detect Sean's love of the beat poets in his album "Cassady" is a delightful tribute to Neal Cassady, a man I felt I could relate to, Kerowac always seemed a nasty bit of work. It's one of the most delicate songs on the album.

This album was the first album that Sean's recorded in the States and it's an experience that seems to have suited him, "Ballad Of A Happy Man" picks up a Cajun beat and takes on that hurricane party feel. Things may be tough, but we're going to have a good time, the song draws in a personal element to it, a couple enjoying their relationship, even if things can be rocky.

Sean has rightly been described as the best acoustic guitarist England has produced in his generation, a description that has perhaps left his use of the piano underrepresented in reviews, but he is man that knows his way around the ivories almost as well as a fretboard, we just don't get to hear it as much, as a piano is difficult to take on tour, especially if you're on the train.

It's a shame, because his album work shows just how attached he gets to the instrument, but I also have to say, you feel he lives and breathes his guitar. On "Love Against Death" you notice that he's working it with percussion a bit more. It gives the album just that little more aural depth and becomes one of the factors that pushes the album that bit further forward, adds more shine to the brilliance.

The other factor would appear to be the production. This album seems to have brought more of Sean onto the grooves. Maybe that's why it is a bit more political, because it is that little bit more personal. Sean has said that this is the best album he's done. I can't help but agree with that. "Love Against Death" is an album that takes sides, it's on the side of the 99% and the side of spectacularly good music and hopefully it's an album that will really get Sean Taylor widely heard, something that's long overdue.

Neil King