Sean Taylor – Live in London
Independent – Out Now
Well, you really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I am desperately missing gigs right now and struggling to come to terms with the idea that there might be no more this year. You take it for granted when it’s ever-present in your life for sure; there’s no way I am doing that again. Just keeping an eye out for who may be coming to play locally, we were so lucky to be on the receiving end of a drip-feed of talented artists and bands playing in the variety of venues found in UK towns and cities. If you had the inclination you could listen to live music every night of the week. And when you seriously get into an artist, taking in a live show is the situation where that appreciation goes to a deeper level. You simply can’t beat the concert experience, and if you pick a good one, you’ll be taken on a musical journey where the artist will touch all corners of their catalogue, regale you with anecdotes and insight and maybe throw a few surprises in too. One such night is preserved on this new release by Sean Taylor.
Taylor is a musician I would have been going out of my way to catch live this year. His album ‘The Path Into Blue‘ had been one of my Folk Radio albums of 2019 and my appetite was sufficiently whetted to seek more. If anything this live album, recorded on 10th October last year at the Green Note in Camden Town, only makes me more frustrated that I’m missing out on the real thing, but in the absence of just that it will compensate for now. ‘Live In London’ has delightful soundboard quality audio, recorded by Oscar Cainer then mixed and mastered by Mark Hallman in Congress House Studios in Austin TX. Remarkably you can kind of hear the sound of the room, there’s a lovely echo to the music bouncing off the walls, and the audience makes their presence felt enough to ensure the session has that vital, in-the-moment, edge (happily no one takes the bait in Sean’s introduction by shouting “hello mum”).
It turns out that Sean Taylor is, as I would have predicted, a performing artist who firmly belongs on the live circuit. Entertaining an audience, that is where he needs to be, and he plays here with a relaxed assuredness, not to mention a musical dexterity, before an attentive crowd. The cover says it all, showing the man in out-and-out Dylan in ’64 live mode, acoustic guitar and harmonica rack in active service and hat tilted at an angle marked ‘road troubadour’. That’s what 19 years of never-ending world-touring will do; you can carry that look with conviction because you live that life for real. Sean Taylor actually doesn’t drive; he mainly travels by train reading poetry and composing on the move. He does not stick to a formula, just like legends of the game such as Van Morrison and Neil Young, he serves the music well and lets every life experience seep into his writing. No two concerts are the same, and it is clear he has that rare gift of being able to gauge the mood of an audience and respond accordingly.
Last year’s studio album was undoubtedly a political beast, a work of topical significance that astutely nailed many social and current affairs issues in song. But it is clear from this set that there is so much more to the man’s writing and playing. Songs like ‘Feel Alright’ from 2010’s ‘Walk With Me’ album and ‘Nightmares’ from 2009’s ‘Calcutta Grove’ are on the one hand bone-shaking, swampy blues and on the other pounding, switched on and totally wired story-telling. That latter track, in particular, is a calling card for the impressive playing Sean brings to the table. Keeping a pumping, energised rhythm going as the backbone of the tune, he still manages to let off mini fireworks from his fingertips with sublime fills and flourishes.
Furthermore, the most recent pieces from the Taylor repertoire stand tall as solo interpretations. ‘Little Donny’ is suitably savage and ‘The Path Into Blue’ soothes and offers some light out of the darkness of depression. And it’s a real delight to hear Sean carefully wrapping his tongue around the brilliant lyrical verses of ‘This Is England‘.
Sean Taylor has a natural flair as a showman too, not in the theatrics sense for this is very much a performer whose comfort zone is to just be himself on stage. But just witness how he turns his version, inspired by a love of Skip James, of ‘Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’ into an audience participation number and even gently berates his crowd for peaking too soon. Also, his medley of ‘Lorca’ and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is so much more than the self-deprecating “putting a bunch of songs together and hoping for the best” that he claims. In actual fact, he locates the raw blues at this classic song’s core to the extent that you believe the death-wishing loneliness is wholly real. The penultimate number ‘Troubadour’ is Sean at his most accessible, it’s a real earworm this one with it’s “yeah yeah yeah” refrain and elates the crowd ahead of another eclectic mash-up of an encore. This sees ‘Basho’ segue into a snatch of the Davy Graham classic ‘Anji’ which itself turns out to be an intro into Percy Mayfield’s timeless ‘Hit The Road Jack’. Now that’s the way a real troubadour ends a gig.
So essentially this is a super quality live album that both serves as a broad showcase for the music of one of the modern era’s most gifted singer-songwriter’s, in the classic style of such craftsmen, and a pristine document of a great night out on the live circuit in late 2019. It’s an important little marker in the career of Sean Taylor too, for it presents him at a mature, confident moment in his performing with a strong back catalogue to pick from and new music bursting forth in a manner suggesting his peak may still be ahead of him. But as pleasurable as you will no doubt find this record it does come with a warning; it won’t half make you long for the return of live, in the flesh, gigs. There’s nothing better than the real thing. Here is proof that Sean Taylor is very much the real thing.
https://soundcloud.com/sean-taylor-songs/5-hold-on
Order a signed copy of Live in London via Sean’s website here: https://www.seantaylorsongs.com/live-in-london
https://www.seantaylorsongs.com/
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Photo Credit: Nick Barber