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Review: 'MCNIFF, JASON'
'Tonight We Ride'   

-  Label: 'Self Released'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '24th June 2022'

Our Rating:
This record is mainly a collection of covers from songwriters that have inspired this Yorkshireman's writing and playing.

McNiff also works as a music teacher and now lives with his family to Hastings where he runs and plays at a popular 'Sundowner' event.

The idea for this album came after the pandemic forced him to take his weekly gig online. He says: ”I approached the recording as if they'd been my own songs (I wish!) and went to the same studio and producer (Roger Askew) where I made my most recent record, Dust Of Yesterday.”

The choices will come as no great surprise to anyone familiar with any of McNiff’s previous albums.They include two Dylan songs (One Too Many Mornings and Precious Angel) plus tunes by Townes Van Zandt (My Proud Mountains), Leonard Cohen (Moving On) and a live version of Stephen Foster’s Hard Times.

His take on Running From Home and The Open Road have received an official seal of approval from The Bert Jansch Foundation. The cover of Dire Straits’ Tunnel Of Love seems primarily designed to show off his fingerpicking chops in that it faithfully replicates Mark Knopfler’s guitar solo.

The title track is a Tom Russell song and McNiff cheekily slips in a couple of his own tunes:I Remember You and Shadow Ships Of Deptford.

There’s a bold remodel of The Waterboys’Fisherman's Blues but the most radical makeover is to eliminate the LSD influenced psychedelia from The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows. This is an interesting exercise but strips the song of its intensity in the process.

The album is self-indulgent but mostly in a nice way and McNiff brings a gentle intimacy to the material.

Jason McNiff’s website
  author: Martin Raybould

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MCNIFF, JASON - Tonight We Ride