John Smith – The Fray
Commoner Records 26 March 2021
John Smith’s sixth album ‘The Fray’, comes on the back of a personally traumatic year involving a miscarriage and his mother’s cancer diagnosis. Recorded at Real World Studios and co-produced with Sam Lakeman, it opens with the feelgood, handclap rhythm and strummed surfer campfire groove of Friends, an appropriate choice given that the what follows features an assemblage of stellar musicians, among them, a backing band made up of pianist Jason Rebello, bass player Ben Nicholls, Paolo Nutini’s drummer Jay Sikora, Marcus Hamblett on horns and Jessica Staveley-Taylor of The Staves on vocals.
Just as the opener talks of always being there for someone, so too does the equally laid back feel of Hold On speak of making it through in times of trouble and “rolling with the punches every day”, Staveley-Taylor’s backing vocals adding a soaring choral touch. Maybe it’s down to being based in Devon, but there’s a similar Jack Johnson vibe to Sanctuary, a post-break-up number that finds him “Drinking hard in circles/Trying to forget”, having a meaningless one-night stand, culminating in the wry observation “I’m a fool if I think that/ Wine and a stranger/ Waking up wasted/Ever fixed a broken heart/But it’s a place to start”.
By contrast, the self-questioning Deserving is perhaps more evocative of John Martyn in its hand percussion guitar work and breathily sung lyrics, then comes the first of the guest contributions with Sarah Jarosz on backing vocals and Bill Frisell playing electric guitar on the five-minute Sarah Siskind co-write Best Of Me which, opening with double bass and chiming guitar frills, has a close of the day feel and lyrics that offer some painful self-examining (“I dig around inside of my intentions/For my love has been a source of some contention/I’ve hurt the ones who look at me so clearly/And choked on all my habits with a smile”), accentuating the loss of the one who was a comfort in the night “with just the beating of your heart”.
The second, recorded with a virtual session in Dublin, reunites him with regular touring partner Lisa Hannigan duetting on the lovely fingerpicked, woundedly sung and aching Star-Crossed Lovers and its plea for a second chance. The track also features a guitar solo by Kenneth Pattengale from The Milk Carton Kids who themselves put in a subsequent appearance along with Hannigan on the piano-based title track ballad, part Elton John, part Tom Waits, which addresses the madness of the music business and how it makes you lose touch with who you are (“I barely know the person/That I’ve claimed to be”) but still “looking for the kindness of strangers” and “reaching out for friendship/And the goodness that it brings”, “holding onto hope” because “though it disappears sometimes/It returns with every season”.
Jarosz and Hannigan also both turn up elsewhere, the former duetting on Eye To Eye, another Siskind co-write, about a collapsing relationship (“Is it true that we are breaking down?/Can’t believe that this would happen now/Can we work it out?) set to a country-flavoured choppy hand percussion guitar rhythm, while the latter harmonises for the slow waltzing strummed sway of Just As You Are, another song about being there to offer mutual support (“Whenever I’m hurting and hiding my tears…You kill all my fears/So when you feel like everything’s broken/I will be here”).
Prior to these, another gem in a vault of diamonds, Staveley-Taylor on backing vocals, the stirring To The Shore comes with a definite marching through the heather Scottish flavour, an anticipating the end number (“I can see the flood is coming/And I’m soaking to the skin/Swimming out the door… Like a storm against my walls If I don’t hold myself together Pretty soon I’m gonna fall”) that someone really should push in the direction of Rod Stewart.
It ends then with, first, the brief solo fingerpicked recovery-themed She’s Doing Fine with its warm brass coda and, finally, the mingling of pain and positivity in the piano and guitar arranged One Day At A Time where he asks “How do you get over/One day at a time?”, touching despair with “I don’t know how to pray/And nobody’s listening/On the first day of the rest/Just the rest of my life” but finding acceptance, resolution and perhaps healing with “And though we’ll never meet/My love you’re still a part of me”. A shoo-in for the best of the year lists, Smith says these are the most honest songs he’s ever written, about accepting that life can be tough, but trying to enjoy it anyway. If we don’t hold on, we’re lost, he says. This has a grip of iron.
Photo Credit: Elly Lucas