Fads and fashions come and go, but the best performers will always have that extra something that sets them apart, even if they're not depicted on the cover of the fashion mags pertaining to be the Rock weeklies these days.
Lancashire singer/ songwriter IAN BAILEY is one such character. He's slowly but surely been fashioning a catalogue of real repute and his third album, 'Tower Songs' is surely his most elegant and mature work to date.
The 'Tower' the title refers to is one Lindeth Tower. An unspoilt folly on the North Lancashire coastline, it was once used as a retreat by the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote her novel 'Ruth' there in 1853. Ian Bailey would himself hole up there in the autumn of 2008 and some of that creative magic clearly rubbed off on him, as the nine songs making up 'Tower Songs' were penned during this sojourn.
The album itself was again recorded with Gary Hall at the co-production helm and long-time collaborators such as Richard Curran (Cornershop, Bert Jansch) arranging and executing the lush, elegiac strings. The songs are graceful and slow-burning and require a few listens to really hit home, but when they do, they hit home for good and you're seriously hooked.
Such is the strength of the album that even the scene-setting instrumentals 'Anywhere' and 'La Puerta' gain in vitality after repeated exposure. 'Anywhere' is a gentle, Mediaeval-tinged piece for guitar and mandolin, while 'La Puerta' opens with the sound of howling wind around Lindeth Tower before Curran's strings gradually caress Bailey's delicate acoustic guitar framework.
The songs themselves are real beauties. Most of 'em are romantically inclined, but often racked with self-doubt. During the swooning ballad 'Lost At Sea', Bailey admits: “this man, he can't find his way home/ so he sails through the shadows alone”, whilst on the gritty, Byrds-tinged folk-rocker 'New Start' he confesses “I'm the one for you my love, but I'm not the one for me.” It's never self-pitying, though, merely evocative and knowing, not to mention all too easy to relate to in these nervous times. Bailey's heartfelt, but poised voice, meanwhile, has become more confident and poised and is a joy to listen to throughout.
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Although gentle, heart-melting moments like the acoustic 'I Long to Write Her A Love Song' are closest to the record's heart, the turmoil of the modern world occasionally sticks its' ugly head over the parapet. To this end, witness the Dylan-esque 'Romance of Modern Invention', which takes a sizeable swipe at the sort of desperate consumerism (“these rooms of want and desire, I've seen them come and go/ keeping up with the Joneses keeps their hearts aglow”) most of us seem to have become answerable to these days.
Probably the apex of the record's achievement is reached by the epic seven-minute closing track 'Saving Grace'. A plaintive paean to the everlasting goodness of love, it marries strings, piano, bass and drums and one of Bailey's finest vocals and brings it all back home with a gospel choir. It's steeped in dignity that's rare these days and is surely one of the best things Ian has done to date.
'Tower Songs' is Ian Bailey's third great album on the trot, an achievement all too few people can realistically boast of this side of 2000. It's the one that seals his reputation as one of the best British singer/ songwriters out there at the moment and it really should be the one that gets his name out to far greater numbers. But even if it doesn't he shouldn't be dissuaded. With 'Tower Songs', he's compiled a record which will ride out the vagaries and endure.
Ian Bailey on Myspace
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