Jason McNiff – Dust of Yesterday
Tombola (TR2020) – 16 April 2021
That someone as talented as Jason McNiff can be releasing his seventh full-length album and yet still have managed to elude the radar of so many, remains a conundrum and one of life’s perplexingly unsolved mysteries.
Academically gifted and erudite, having both modern languages and English literature degrees to his name, he cites Chekhov, Hemmingway and the Greek/Egyptian poet Cavafy as major influences on his work. Whilst these have impacted upon the lyrical aspects of his work, and may, at times, be harder to discern, those elements which have shaped his musical style are more readily understood.
Having become enamoured with the folk and blues scene in Nottingham, the location for his first tranche of University studies, absorbing the work of such luminaries as Davey Graham and Wizz Jones, his fingerstyle guitar playing received its greatest apprenticeship in the mid-1990s, following his move to London to undertake his second degree. Weekly visits, over a six month period, saw the pupil bag his place on the front row of the 12 Bar Cub in Soho in order to learn from the master, Bert Jansch, who was undertaking a residency at this esteemed venue.
Jason’s undoubted talent resulted in him undertaking support slots for Bert, and a first record deal with Snowstorm Records, run by Bert’s brother-in-law. Further releases followed, on various labels, including 2003’s Nobody’s Son, and April Cruel which was nominated for best alt-country album at the Independent Music Awards in the US in 2011.
Now based in Hastings, Dust Of Yesterday is his first album since leaving London. As alluded to by the title, this superb release is very much an autobiographical journey of his life so far, a threnody to past places, events and people, a lamentation for lost youth, a musical equivalent to aspects of Alain Fournier’s evocative Le Grand Meaulnes perhaps? Whilst all of the songs on the album speak of the past, it is in the same context as the work of Cavafy for whom memory and the past is carried in the present, indeed Jason’s lyric-writing style also often seems to echo that of Cavafy’s poetry.
Showcasing Jason’s signature acoustic guitar work throughout, the album was recorded, produced and engineered at the home studio of Roger Askew¸ whose credits include work with Wilko Johnson, Christy Moore and Joe Strummer. Undertaken in Eastbourne over the summer and autumn of 2020, with Jason also providing vocals and keyboards, along with Roger’s bass and electric guitars, backing vocals & keyboards, there are also impressive and notable contributions from Basia Bartz, violin, and Beth Porter, cello.
Faith, mortality, spirituality and a reflection on existence also appear as motifs. In opener, For the First Time, a breezy, summery-sounding song with more than a musical nod to JJ Cale or early Mark Knopfler, for example, he reminisces on times in London town whilst ruminating on what the future might hold
When at last my time comes
I know that I'll be prepared…
If I reach Heaven's Gate, I know I will find
and I'll see what I love for the first time... again
Even more overt are the references within Wherever I Choose, a magnificently constructed piece and one of the album’s, admittedly many, highlights. Written on a roof terrace in Palma, Mallorca in 2018, the night after a gig in the grounds of artist Joan Miro’s studio, this was inspired by the playing and singing of some vagrants outside a closed-down bar in the Old Town. Musically, the sounds of his Vicente Sanchis classical guitar, Roger’s electric, and the beguiling erhu, a Chinese two-string spike fiddle, create an evocative Mediterranean atmosphere. The lyrics describe the virtues of simple beauties, a freedom to roam through an ancient city, the pleasure of music-making, whilst an unconcealed consideration of God lays his contemplations bare
Since we're talking about God, It's clear there is no doubt
Some people really need him, Others do without
And as I sit I wonder, try to understand my mind
I do believe I'm a believer, but that don't make me kind.
Mary Jane, is a gently lilting slice of Americana-tinged folk which compares the negative,
Sometimes it feels like my dreams have died, And I don't know how I got here
with a more optimistic
But then I remember that my dreams are still alive,
And that loneliness that comes from fear disappears,
because, ultimately,
The best times I ever had were with you, Mary Jane.
One of the tracks on Jason’s latest double A-sided single, this song contrasts with the melancholic, slower-paced flip If You Could See Me Now. A moving, thought-provoking piece about an alcoholic who has come to the end of the road with their drinking, and facing what, to a lucid, healthy mind would be a straightforward choice between life and death, but as with anyone suffering from such an illness, simplicity in terms of binary options rarely outweighs the complexities of their situation. The subject matter is further underscored by the lugubrious instrumentation in which the strings sympathetically enhance the mood.
In a similar vein, and featuring a gorgeous electric guitar break, Tom, recounts the sad tale of a college friend, lost over time, whilst title song, Dust of Yesterday is another slow-burning majestic track. Pondering on thoughts of youth, recreating from the dust of yesterday, he sets the listener thinking as he clearly has
Got plans for the future but bigger plans for the past
Jason’s musical upbringing and grounding encompassed exposure to the work of the great folk/rock troubadours of the 1960s and 70s, and here this is apparent in tracks that echo a narrative storytelling technique in the style of, for example, Al Stewart or Harry Chapin. Thus, from his eight-year residency as a Flamenco guitarist in a Spanish bar in Waterloo, we are treated to Damaged Woman, with ‘the night rolling round in your eyes’ and in A Load Along his recollections of hiding in the toilets having hopped, ticketless, on the northbound train from King’s Cross, up to Nottingham,
thinking to myself this inspector will one day lift
His reputation among his friends for saying he once caught Jason McNiff.
Having successfully mined his personal experiences, Jason McNiff has delivered another work of truly great merit. Dust Of Yesterday is a well-crafted and beautifully performed album and provides a compelling argument for the artist to gain even wider recognition.
To be released on 16th April on Vinyl, CD & Digital.
Website: https://www.jasonmcniff.com/