Chris Cleverley – Live from the Glass Isle
Opiate Records – 6 August 2021
Recorded ‘live’ near the foot of Glastonbury Tor last August on the pagan festival of Lughnasadh following a dawn walk of the Tor’s spiral path, Live from the Glass Isle finds rising star Chris Cleverley revisiting songs from his two studio albums in a stripped-down voice and guitar setting.
There is, in fact, only one from his 2015 debut, Apparitions, his rework of the American traditional Shenandoah (here with or The Blood Red River appended to the title), though, in fact, it now comes with a new (presumably) self-penned opening verse following the guitar and hand percussion intro. It’s interesting to listen to the two different recordings because it underscores the development he’s made as a performer. The original, like the album, is well-crafted but with a certain clinically technical precision. In contrast, now both on disc and in person, a fire and passion burn in his singing to match the dazzling fretwork.
Save for one number, Glitter, a lovely, breathily sung, strum-along cover of a song about the fading of a relationship’s lustre from Minnie Birch’s debut album, complete with choral backing vocals, the remaining choices are taken from 2019’s We Sat Back And Let It Unfold. The album opens with the choppy, bluesy rhythm of his Nathaniel Hawthorne-inspired The Scarlet Letter and, following with a slightly longer take, the midtempo waltzing sway of The Ones Like Ourselves and its celebration of our shared imperfections.
Two firm live favourites follow on from Shenandoah, a slower pace adding almost a minute to the playing time of the crowd friendly chorus The Low Light Low, his bittersweet song of mental illness, loss, support and compassion with emotion-laden lines like “we hope to be ones who take care of our own/So we hope that there’s some way that you could have known/In those final moments you were never alone”.
A jubilant song about the sensations of falling in love, again taking extended form with a lengthy reflective fingerpicked intro rather than launching straight into the lyric and the tumbling chords, The Arrows And The Armour still shimmers and rings like celebratory church bells.
By contrast, however, the ‘final’ number is shorter than the original, sparse, spooked, rasped guitar string preluding Madame Moonshine with its Georgian London-set account of “decades of ritual sin” and “a private house where esoteric dark arts occurred” though its fairly clear the narrative is an allegory of addiction (“Our souls and our sanity are forever stained/But you’ll crawl back into her embrace again and again”). There is, however, a bonus track, a shorter yet slower waltzing and no less gorgeous version of Rachael that features Chris on guitar but with the vocals from fellow local musician and friend Dan Whitehouse, recorded in Yokahama during his Covid-enforced stay in Japan. This stripped-back album not only illuminates what a gifted songwriter Cleverley is but is also a glowing testament to his growing and emotionally nuanced power as a singer and the luminous nature of his guitar playing.
Live from The Glass Isle is out on 6 August 2021. It will be available as a very limited run of special edition CDs as well as a digital download. Keep an eye on his website below and his Bandcamp page for updates.
Chris Cleverley Tour Dates
30.07 – B Bar, Plymouth (Devon)
31.07 – Parish Church, Kingskerswell (Devon) – with Dan Whitehouse
01.08 – Schtumm, Box (Wiltshire)
05.08 – The Dark Horse, Moseley (Birmingham) – ALBUM LAUNCH PARTY
08.08 – Green Note, Camden (London) – with Tobias Ben Jacob
For more info and ticket links, visit https://www.chriscleverley.com/
Photo credit: Abbie Barton