James Yorkston – The Route To The Harmonium
Domino Records – 22 February 2019
James Yorkston is the definition of quietly experimental. On the surface, he’s crafted a career as a guitar-toting troubadour with a knack for combining a laid-back approach to sound with a sharp ear for lyrical detail. But there’s more to him than that. His collaborations have been varied and at times inspired: Rustin Man and Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet) have produced his albums, he has recorded a collection of traditional material with The Big Eyes Family Players, and has released two albums as part of the groundbreaking Yorkston/Thorne/Khan trio.
And yet there is something else about Yorkston, something less tangible. It is to do with mood, and with how he inhabits his own sound-world and creates something that couldn’t have been created by anyone else. Albums like 2008 fan-favourite When The Haar Rolls In build an entire, coherent tableau of finely drawn characters in messy, realistic, intensely human situations. His songs are often lyrical examinations of human emotion played out against the backdrop of the natural world, and in particular the area around the fishing village of Cellardyke in eastern Scotland, where Yorkston wrote and recorded his new album.
The Route To The Harmonium is, as its title suggests, an album about the search for peace. The usual soft-focus lacework of acoustic guitar and the gentle bite of Yorkston’s voice are there from the opening notes of Your Beauty Could Not Save You, along with a shy tremor of brass. Sadness and loss remain regular themes of his work, simultaneously framed and obscured by the comforting mist of production (the producer here is David Wrench, another former Four Tet collaborator, who has worked with Yorkston since 2003).
Like Bees To Foxglove is as gentle and as pastoral as its title suggests, full of melancholy hope and tenderness, while Shallow begins as a piano-led shuffle before its emphatic, kinetic chords draw it on into darker territory and The Blue Of The Thistle is little more than Yorkston’s voice, some delicately plucked strings and the subtlest of background instrumentation – so subtle in fact that it almost blends in with the audible ambient sounds. Solitary Islands is equally minimal, if a little more forceful.
The Villages I Have Known My Entire Life is another piano-based piece, both introspective and impressionistic, that fits snugly into the intricate tapestry of Yorkston’s most personal songs. Oh Me, Oh My proceeds on deceptively simple acoustic guitar, not unlike early Leonard Cohen or Bill Callahan, and is cushioned by Tom Arthurs’ jazzy trumpet (which crops up all over the album, sad and playful). A Footnote To An Epitaph, the album’s closing track, is a hopeful song about the passing of friends and represents the possibility of peace that is only hinted at in the preceding songs.
So this is in the end an album about peace. But that peace is hard-won, and there are moments of helplessness and turmoil along the way. That turmoil reaches its apex in the harshness and discordance of My Mouth Ain’t No Bible, one of three predominantly spoken-word pieces. Yorkston comes across like a folk-rock Mark E. Smith in an unsentimental but utterly moving tribute to a recently departed friend and colleague.
Of the other two spoken pieces, The Irish Wars Of Independence links Yorkston’s own youth with wider history against swathes of lush psych-folk, and Yorkston Athletic is a salty, squally monologue: a quasi-historical document and seafarer’s ode all at once.
Yorkston’s work is always extremely personal, and as such it fosters reactions that are equally personal. Add to that the scope and ambition of his songwriting and you have an artistic vision that is unique among today’s songwriters. The Route To The Harmonium is another outstanding instalment in that body of work, a finely-wrought and elegiac album shot through with moments of real innovation.
Upcoming James Yorkston live shows
1st April – Perth Theatre, Perth
2nd May – Summerhall, Edinburgh Tickets
3rd May – Òran Mór, Glasgow Tickets
4th May – Harbour Arts Centre, Irvine Tickets
5th May – Waiting Room, Eaglescliffe Tickets
6th May – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds Tickets
7th May – Islington Assembly Hall, London Tickets
8th May – Reading Arts Centre, Reading Tickets
9th May – Gallery, Milton Keynes Tickets
10th May – Dukes, Lancaster Tickets
11th May – Launderette, Durham Tickets
13th May – Louisiana, Bristol Tickets
14th May – The Moon, Cardiff Tickets
15th May – The King’s Arms, Manchester Tickets
16th May – Trades Hall, Hebden Bridge Tickets
24th May – Tolbooth, Stirling Tickets
Upcoming Yorkston/Thorne/Khan live shows
Fri 25th January 2019 – Coughlan’s, Cork
Sat 26th January 2019 – Phil Grimes, Waterford
Tickets
Photo Credit: Ren Rox