Alasdair Roberts – The Fiery Margin
Drag City – 13 September 2019
The work of some musicians – those with exceptionally long and productive careers and those who attempt a complete creative mastery of their catalogue – can often be spoken of in distinctly observable phases or patterns. Bob Dylan is an example that is as obvious as it is extreme: the protest singer phase was followed by the electric phase which was followed by the post-motorcycle accident country/roots phase and so on. Less obvious but just as pertinent is the output of David Berman, whose death in August provoked a singular and profound grief in anyone who had enjoyed his remarkable songwriting. As the frontman of the Silver Jews, Berman developed a system of recording albums that he called the Zig-Zag Method: he would record every other album with the band’s original lineup (essentially Pavement), and the ones in between would be made with session musicians, other bands or as de facto solo projects. This had the effect of stymying the accepted – and perhaps cliched – linearity of a career trajectory and, as Berman remarked (in a statement that took the form of a poem): ‘It’s little things like that/that form crossbeams/across a small discography.’
Alasdair Roberts shares a record label – the peerless Drag City – with Berman. It would also seem that he shares Berman’s zig-zag philosophy or at least a well-developed and nuanced species of it. Roberts’ releases for Drag City fall ostensibly into two distinct camps: the collections of traditional songs and those of his own material. And broadly speaking one will follow the other, in that zig-zag pattern. There is more to it than this, however, when you realise what an extensive, eclectic and prolific collaborator Roberts is. He has lent his distinctive voice to avant-folk supergroups (Black Flowers), a cappella singing collectives (this year’s wonderful Green Ribbons) and just about everything in between.
So perhaps it is more useful to see Roberts’ albums with Drag City as guiding poles or perhaps solstices rather than crossbeams. They represent the essence of his work, stark and condensed, while the extracurricular releases are his equinoxes, dappled and gleefully tangential. He works in cycles; his artistic world is one of seasons and change and movement. It is the course of a man in tune – if only subconsciously – to the harmonic structure of the world and its place in the universe.
This means that his albums – and in particular his solo albums – are always strikingly contemporary, always steeped in the distinct feel of the present, even as they relish the weird and glorious and sometimes terrifying pageant of history. New album The Fiery Margin is a case in point. Even the title conjures images of debated borderlands, disrupted lives, obscure geography. Images that feel uncomfortably close to the world we inhabit. In one song, Europe (even the song’s title seems like a form of provocation these days), he celebrates the life of a former prisoner of Nazi Germany, Freddie Knoller, who is now ninety-eight years old. But he also paints a picture of a contemporary Europe, a place formed partly by the peace that followed the second world war, and a place seemingly more uncertain than ever of its future.
Opening track False Flesh takes as its subject Margery Kempe, a late-medieval mystic, and like a number of songs here it uses a traditional tune – in this case the American folk song Turkey In The Straw – and a lyrical style characterised by folk idiom to make a point that is universal and relevant. Musically, it shows off Roberts’ nimble guitar playing and Alex Neilson’s percussion, which moves from subtle to demonstrative between verse and chorus. The Evernew Tongue has even older roots – an Irish text a millennium old – and is set to the Irish/Appalachian tune Give The Fiddler A Dram. It is blessed with a mean electric guitar solo.
Perhaps the most obviously contemporary song here is Comments, a sly but compassionate look at the generation gap and the isolating power of internet debate. A Keen is more like Roberts of old, with lyrics that recall the cosmogonic fancies of A Wonder Working Stone or The Wyrd Meme EP, full of references to the Greek fates and the inescapable cycles of life and death.
The Stranger With The Scythe is loose broth of country and music hall (with added barbershop backing vocals), alternately channelling Incredible String Band wackiness and Flying Burrito Brothers-style pedal steel before the bizarre but welcome surprise of Raymond McDonald’s saxophone brings the song to its conclusion. Neil Sutcliffe’s accordion is a defining feature of Actors, which bounces along, a kind of extended metaphor that takes Jacques’ monologue in As You Like It to its natural conclusion.
Common Clay shows off Neilson’s drumming – which somehow manages to be simultaneously boisterous and sympathetic, and along with Stevie Jones’ bass has become an integral part of Roberts’ sound – to its best effect. It also gives an outlet to Roberts’ unique lyrical gift: few songwriters would attempt lines like ‘you swagger in your larval mask, you ragged old iconoclast.’ Fewer still would write a verse from the point of view of a stone gargoyle. Learning Is Eternal is a slower, more brooding affair, warm and wise, while closer The Untrue Womb has the hint of personal apocalypse about it. It describes a world in which order is overturned, a slowly-unfolding set of vivid images not of the outside world but of the interior of the human body with all of its curses and enchantments.
And of course Roberts is fluent in the language of enchantment and curse. Few artists can so effectively use the strangeness of the old to pin down the strangeness of the new. The Fiery Margin achieves this with the vigour and surefootedness of an artist fully engaged with the world and yet never fully at peace with it.
Order The Fiery Margin (Digital/CD/Vinyl)
The Fiery Margin Tour
17 Oct – Glasgow, The Blue Arrow
18 Oct – St. Monans, Futtle
19 Oct – Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s
20 Oct – Newcastle, Gosforth Civic Theatre
21 Oct – Manchester, The Talleyrand
22 Oct – Todmorden, The Golden Lion
23 Oct – Bristol, Colston Hall
24 Oct – London, St John on Bethnal Green
25 Oct – Brighton, The Rose Hill
26 Oct – Sheffield, The HUBS
27 Oct – Sinderhope, High Forest Community Centre
Photo Credit: Audrey Bizouerne