Back in the salad days of viral cooking videos, did you ever watch Jacques Pépin make an omelette and then try to do it yourself? I did, and occasionally still do, and I make scrambled eggs every time. It’s very frustrating: I have eggs. I have a skillet. Why can’t I make an omelette like Jacques?
This is similar to how I feel when I listen to Nev Clay. I have a guitar. I know a great number of words. So why can’t I write a song like Nev? This is more mysterious to me than the omelette because, while nobody has ever thought of me as a talent in the kitchen, I do make what passes for my living by writing songs and playing the guitar.
But mostly, what I feel when I listen to Nev is the pure pleasure of hearing songs made with a tremendous amount of heart and skill. Both are abundant on his newest record, So Little Happened for So Long.
If you don’t know Nev already, you probably don’t live in Newcastle. That’s where I encountered him the first time – and many times since – supporting my band when we’d come over on tour from Canada. I think he managed to play three songs in thirty minutes that night, which I’ve since learned is par for the course: one of the many legendary things about Nev is the amount of chatting he manages to do in between (and often right in the middle of) his songs. Singers who talk too much can be annoying, as I’ve been told by my own bandmates. But that first night, I was struck by the certainty I’d just discovered my new favourite songwriter before he ever played a note. And by the time he finished his first song, I was ready to get Nev Clay’s face tattooed on my own, the final word in fandom.
I’m still looking for the right face tattoo artist for the job, but in the meantime, Nev has sent me an advance copy of his new record, which is his first full-length album in 23 years. In the intervening decades, Nev has continued to uphold his legendary status on the northeast scene, and I’m not entirely sure he cares much about achieving wider notoriety. If that’s the case, I have bad news for Nev, since this album is far too good to let Tyneside folk keep him a secret any longer.
Nev is a songwriter’s songwriter, as evidenced by the legion of local celebrities who have sung his praises over the years and who guest on his new record (Richard Dawson, Cath & Phil Tyler, Kathryn Williams, and more). But it’s not just songwriters – everybody who hears him falls in love, and I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Not to oversell the cliché about erasing the barrier between the crowd and the stage, but Nev makes performing seem like you’re having a pint with him at the bar. His songs underline this, and finish with a gentle exclamation point and a friendly hug. Whether speaking or singing, Nev draws you into his world, a world where everything matters and nothing is precious except the beautifully mundane details of everyday life.
The strange thing about this is that Nev’s world is a specifically north-eastern one, his songs a hyperlocal love letter to the places that have made him who he is. Yet, far from alienating tourists and passers-by, Nev invites us in. On Hedgerow, he tells us – surprisingly or unsurprisingly, depending on the listener – of his favourite local hedgerow, the place where “the car dealership has gone from north of the Coast Road / Where once was fancy paintwork, just an empty forecourt, where a spiral of bus tickets slowly waltzes with all the crap that you find in a hedgerow.”
Elsewhere, songs like Culler of Coats and especially Cuddy’s Cave are rapid-fire litanies of regional winks and nods. The locals chuckle knowingly, and I scurry for the atlas to find Seaton Delaval and Byker and the late, great Wilko on Shields Road, and then afterwards to the mighty online encyclopaedia of our age to figure out just who Freddie the Dolphin and the Lambton Worm and Johnny Fartpants might be. They sound like just the sort of folks I’d like to be friends with. I’ve only been to Tyneside a handful of times, and never seen much more than a few venues and petrol stations, but when I listen to Nev rhyming super-strong weed with The Venerable Bede and the great Northumbrian coastal plain with the Bargain Booze in Percy Main, I have a vivid picture of the place in my mind that no council tourism efforts can possibly match. City officials, take note: Nev Clay makes me want to spend some proper time in Newcastle, maybe even move there – that magical place where a man called Waddle might comb his mullet and feed me kippers from Craster, or tell me a tale of the Elsdon Gibbet as we sit in the sunshine admiring the badger at Prudhoe.
Other songs mostly skip the local signifiers, and instead cut straight to the heart of what it means to succeed and fail as a darts player, a hopeful romantic, or a Catholic saint (Nine Dart Finish), the relationship between workplace accessories, identity, and authority (Lanyard), and secret office loves (Leaving Do). This album also contains some of the best songs I’ve ever heard about ageing (Poor Old Bodies) and death (Green Leaves), but these two are excellent examples of Nev’s ability to dance a jig along the line between sincerity and humour, always finding the laughter inside the basic tragedy of existence. Listen to this: “The council planted a hundred saplings here / most of them thriving and growing old / but some were uprooted by stupid children / sometimes the green leaves fall before the gold.”
If Nev was simply a charming performer and a gifted lyricist, it would be enough. He could sing his songs to the accompaniment of an old Casio keyboard, shaping melodies around the pre-programmed demonstration tunes, and it would be enough. But – and I can’t believe I’ve written this much without mentioning it yet – Nev is also a brilliant multi-instrumentalist, and his virtuosity is all over this record. I’ve seen impressive players before, and so have you, and let’s be honest: they’re usually wankers, substituting years of practising in the full-length mirror for any sense of original musicality or soul. Nev Clay could out-shred the best of them, but his intricate picking, unusual chord voicing, and gift for counter-melody always supports and never distracts from the essential excellence of the songs themselves. Likewise, the album’s production choices are inventive and occasionally surprising, but ultimately honest, emphasising the humanness of the very talented humans that put it all together.
If I say anything else about how good this record is, you might not believe me, so I’ll stop. But if all this sounds like hyperbole, that’s only because you haven’t heard Nev Clay yet.
So Little Happened for So Long is my record of the year, and the remainder of 2024 is irrelevant. It doesn’t officially come out until the summer (on Prancey Dog Records, and props to local promoter Chris Trew for making it happen), but you can hear a couple of songs and pre-order the LP now; if you like physical versions of albums, you should do this immediately, because there are a shockingly limited number available.
I hope it’s not another 23 years before Nev’s next record, but he seems to have an admirably relaxed and realistic view of time, and I don’t want to rush him. In his own words:
“I was born recently, 20,000 days ago / From my first tooth to that last drink, there’s not a lot to show / One day I had a hangover, one day I wrote a song. / Here it is: so little happened for so long.”
So Little Happened for So Long is released on 25 July 2024 via Prancey Dog Records.
Pre-order here: https://nevclay.bandcamp.com/album/so-little-happened-for-so-long
Next Show:
May 30 – Little Buildings, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK