Chris Fox
In Plain Sight
Self Released
9 September 2022
Chris Fox‘s 2019 album, From The Shadows, seemed tipped for a breakthrough, but the pandemic rather screwed all that up. Instead, the Cambridgeshire singer-songwriter Chris Fox spent the next year writing the songs that now form In Plain Sight, his fourth album. He is accompanied by Holly Brandon on fiddle, Dan Wilde on banjo and legendary bassist John Parker. It was clearly time well spent.
Anchored with fiddle and uptight bass, born of a dues-paying gig supporting an Elvis impersonator, the folk-blues Diamonds and Gold is about appreciating whatever you can if you work in the music business but also offers his take on fame and fortune (“I don’t need it all I just need enough …Expensive things they make a mess of my soul”) and not ticking boxes to make a name for yourself (“I’m not a ghost with a ball and chain/I don’t want to be a picture in a gilded frame”).
Describing it as a John Martyn fingerpicked style with clicking percussion in the background, Better Than That has a township lilt to the melody (something that resurfaces later) and is basically about focusing on the things that matter rather than the must-haves of modern life (“You’ve never made a million pound and now you’re living life in fear/just remember that money you crave couldn’t buy back those wasted years”) and that “like a ball and chain, mistakes they come round again just hop straight back on your train and be reminded in time… we can do better than that”.
A reflection on the way that friendships change over the years, and people move away or drift apart (“I always knew you’d go someday, you always said you would/It’s time for new beginnings, it’s time for you to go/Our paths will cross again someday, so for now, let’s raise a toast”), One More For The Road is a lovely plaintive ballad with a Kristofferson-like country undertone and is a track you’ll find yourself returning to again and again.
There are occasions when his voice and delivery are reminiscent of a less intense Luke Jackson, one such being the dusty folk-country tinge of What Came Over Me, a song written after a not entirely fruitful short attempt at meditation to get some introspection (“I’m trying to believe one of those days could show me where I’m meant to be…Somedays I’m fighting for a future/Other days I’m struggling for a hold/What comes over me, well I’m failing to see”).
The theme of accepting yourself extends to the fingerpicked Perfectly Normal, a supportive song written for a friend struggling to come to terms with how they looked (“I think that you’re sexy/You come with all the right bits/You don’t need those implants/Or a pair of fake lips”) given the barrage of impossible standards we’re constantly bombarded with by social media (“face down your enemy/When it’s staring back at you/Smile at your appearance, swallow your pride/And take the world in your stride”). Think of it as his Just The Way You Are.
Another simple fingerpicked melody with underpinning bass notes, Wandering looks back on his rude awakening to the real world after leaving school, with no idea of where he was going or what he wanted and ending up on the retail treadmill stacking shelves as he sings about longing to escape the doldrums (“there’s nothing for me here/And I’m burning through my best years/I’m gonna make a break for the railway station/ buy my life a new destination… I’m gonna lace my boots and just start walking /you can come along and do all the talking/I’ll need the best of friends/Right there with me to the end”).
The township zing returns for Way Up, the title phrasing reminiscent of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a ridiculously catchy and playful number about the things or the person that makes you happy and takes you way up high. A more serious note is struck on the circular guitar pattern and aching fiddle backing of You’ll Never Get Back, on which he draws on his own experience of mental health issues (“Some days there’s a ghost in your cupboard/Some nights there’s one under your bed/And you spend all your time worrying about the place where you lay you head/Some days there’s no cover to run for/Some nights you just can’t get to sleep/And you find yourself snowed under and you just can’t get no relief”), reminding of the need of facing your fears because “If you start running you’ll never get back”.
I mentioned Jackson earlier and, like him, Fox also wrote a song in response to Rishi Sunak’s pandemic suggestion that musicians retrain, here, fiddle and bass prominent, Who Knows speaks of following your own path even if the destination is uncertain (“There’s no schedule to the life that I lead/I don’t walk in other men’s shoes/I make my own way one step at a time/So I’ll keep on moving down the pathways I’m choosing/Where the trouble just passes me by”).
It ends with the sage wisdom of Dance With The Devil, a jaunty Latin rhythm folk blues that proffers “if you’re gonna dance with the devil, you might as well lead”, apparently a statement by someone he saw “engulf enough hallucinogens to fly to Saturn and stay there” and, while Fox professes to never exploring the outer realms of decaf, the song is a celebration of the agents of chaos who are constantly testing the boundaries life and the lies they tell you to impose – “I sing to hell with the rules, let’s see what you can achieve”. Witty and wise in equal measure, this is his best yet and, as the song says, it’ll take you way up.
Pre-Order In Plain Sight via Bandcamp: https://chrisfox2.bandcamp.com/