Taylor Ashton – The Romantic
Signature Sounds – Out Now
One of my favourite ever live music memories comes from the Campbell Bay Music Festival on Mayne Island, British Columbia, which keen observers may have noted I attend every year. A large new stage was unveiled for the 2019 event, but prior to that, the action took place on a small hand-built stage, above which to its left was a rock bluff from where ‘tweeners’ would entertain attendees between sets from featured acts. From atop that bluff a few years back, armed with a banjo, Taylor Ashton belted out a euphoric, passionate rendition of Springsteen’s evergreen epic Born to Run that sent the crowd, my wife and I included, into raptures and full-on singalong mode. It truly was one of those moments.
Now living in Brooklyn, Ashton is the former lead vocalist/banjoist with the acclaimed Canadian indie-folk outfit, Fish & Bird. I say ‘former’ only as an assumption, as the band, while not having officially announced their dissolution, describe their present status as dormant. Meanwhile, the five members have gone onto other projects, such as Aerialists, Della Mae, Early Spirit, Laura Cortese and the Dance Cards, and Jenny Ritter.
Following Been on Your Side, 2018’s lovely collaboration with Courtney Hartman, having bagged a deal with Signature Sounds Recordings (Lake Street Dive / Birds of Chicago / Chris Smither etc.), Ashton has now delivered his long-awaited solo debut, The Romantic and, as hoped and expected, it’s an understated folk-pop beauty.
Assisting Ashton on his first solo venture is a formidable cast of eighteen that between them have worked with a ridiculously diverse bunch of musicians, including Alela Diane, Jack White, A Tribe Called Quest and Esperanza Spalding, to name but four. Big Thief’s Buck Meek makes an appearance, as do three members of Lake Street Dive – Ashton’s wife being the band’s lead vocalist, Rachael Price. With this widely experienced and skilled ensemble behind him, in his lyrics, Ashton, as a Canadian ex-pat living the US, explores “processing change and loss and seeing the beautiful, painful passage of time, from twelve different angles.” To further quote from the artist’s website, in the twelve songs plucked from an apparent four hundred-plus penned since he landed in New York, The Romantic chronicles “leaving a relationship, a band, and Canada,” also serving as “an ode to the devastating, ecstatic, gritty, sexy decade of his twenties.”
It’s an album that was chipped away at over time, completed with the encouragement and assistance of producers Alec Spiegelman (Ana Egge / Cuddle Magic) and Jacob Blumberg, who worked on Been on Your Side, and has contributed in technical capacities to releases by Rodney Crowell, Tift Merritt and others. However, although pieced together in fits and starts, there is a definite organic flow to Ashton’s debut, blessed as it is by ideal track sequencing and memorable material.
The nostalgic-sounding ballad F.L.Y. launches proceedings with a double-tracked Ashton vocal, its sweet melody recalling the compositional style of the seemingly missing-in-action Tobias Jesso Jr. Ashton is a really fine clawhammer banjo player, first exhibited here on the second track, Straight Back, a pure pop tune and one of the few lyrics you’ll ever encounter that concerns itself with posture, though more so about an absent lover: I’ve been thinking about how I hold my body, since I can’t hold yours.
Ashton’s banjo again leads the way in Pretenders (on which Meek appears – his contribution later inventively appearing as a sample on the gorgeous Nicole), the track comfortably bedded over Spiegelman’s velvety bass clarinet. One of the aspects of Ashton’s singing voice I’ve always appreciated, and a key feature of Fish & Bird’s sound, is that it is inherently imbued with emotional weight, and this quality shines through on the following song, a lovely folk tune entitled Anyway.
Following the downbeat Fortnight, the album’s first real spine-tingler comes in the form of If You Can Hear Me, which with its lean-on-me sentiment, aching Ashton vocal and soulful backing vocal from Price, is the perfect example of everything I’ve loved about this man’s songwriting to date. The atmosphere is maintained by the folk-soul number, Nicole; then the tempo is upped somewhat by Everybody Used to Be a Baby, the album’s most strident track by far, featuring great woodwind and horn work from Spiegelman. The Curse slows things down once more, Ashton’s vocal hovering in the mix of a spare arrangement.
Fallen Down Tree is another emotionally powerful song and, especially in its yearning chorus, an obvious illustration of the influence of soul music on Ashton’s writing. Lending it a chamber flavour, the great Hannah Epperson contributes a one-woman orchestral violin backing here. The Romantic concludes with two more elegant ballads in Speak in Tongues and Where You Belong, the stillness of the closing track due to the sparse instrumentation of just piano and Blumberg’s barely-there bass synth. It’s a delicate, serene way to bring this largely reflective debut to a satisfying close.
Thinking back to that performance of Born to Run, as well as other Campbell Bay occasions and the numerous YouTube videos in which Ashton has delivered sparkling cover versions from Solange to Cher, Randy Newman to Cyndi Lauper, should he ever decide it’s something he’d enjoy creating I’d welcome a covers album with open arms – but, more pertinently, if he continues to compose songs as good as those on The Romantic, it won’t be too long before his own material is being covered by his contemporaries.
Watch Talor Ashton singing “Nicole” live with a little help from his friends (Darlingside) at the Hawthorne Barn in Provincetown MA.
Order via Bandcamp: https://taylorashton.bandcamp.com/
Photo Credit: Jonno Rattman