Named after the iconic Manhattan Cathedral, In The Shadow of John The Divine is Chris Cleverley‘s first new music in two years. He once again weaves his characteristic experimental style with a trademark sweet-voiced intimacy and inviting melodies as the songs put a personal spin on the usual festive fare that blends joy and wistfulness in the seasonal cocktail of often contradictory emotions, love and grief.
It opens with a Kelly Oliver duet, The Ringing Of Bells, a retitling fuller production reworking of his Christmas 2016 release Ring O Bells, a reflective fingerpicked swayer about being apart but with the lyrics serving a prophetic foreshadowing on the lockdowns to come (“In a year’s time this could all be fine…The silence in the room will be over soon… So there’s this Christmas card rhyme and the scent of the pine needles lying around, that will always remind me/Of those years past, when we were raising a glass/Toasting/Hoping for better times”), that now also has Kathy Pilkinton on vocals and Katie Steven playing clarinet.
Pilkinton’s also to be heard on For A Winter Angel, where she’s joined by her Awake Mother partner Minnie Birch, a song with swaying melodic echoes of The First Noel and chiming bells. The song is about supporting a loved one through a period of declining mental health (“It’s the first year in a while/As Christmas approaches you’ve been able to smile…in that glorious way/I remember you used to before life went astray”) with the prayer “I hope that someday things will shift in your mind/And you find it within you to leave the worst of this behind/And I really don’t need anything more from you/But just to keep on here fighting until the winter is through/And I will put my arms around you, I will love you in ways/That I’m pretty sure aren’t even possible to say”.
They both also feature on the pulsating Vespers, which gives the EP’s title as two former lovers meet on Christmas Eve in the cathedral’s shadow to say their goodbyes in the candlelight to the strains of the Midnight Mass (“It’s an odd time of year for saying goodbyes/For starting all over, drawing a line/Sip at the coffee, stare at the walls/Trying to make some kind of sense of it all”) as the arrangement swells to a finale and the lines “You say “let’s light a candle for peace on Earth/It might not make a difference, things may/never change/But just think where we’d be/Without the faint light of that flickering flame”.
There’s a definite Simon & Garfunkel undercurrent to the synth-rippling folk of Snowfall, My Evergreen, a story of a snowman that offers a bittersweet allegory for the ambiguities and often transitory nature of love (“You built me out of ice/Kept me around for a while/Gave my face an expression…Thank you my love/For bringing me to life…Today was the best day ever/But I’d rather melt away, than be here when it’s over/Today was the best day ever/Cause for a moment there I knew I was alive”).
It ends with a five-minute plus rearrangement of Sufjan Stevens’ Sister Winter and its mingling of melancholy and whimsy, Tim Heymerdinger on drums with harmonies from Pilkinton and Graham Coe, who also provides cello solo, ending with the apt words “I’ve returned to wish you a happy Christmas”. This is definitely one you want to find in your Christmas stocking.
In The Shadow of John The Divine (6th Decemeber 2024)
Upcoming Live Dates
Nov 30 – The Stables – Milton Keynes, UK
Dec 1 – Hare & Hounds – Venue 2 – Kings Heath, Birmingham, UK
The December 1st show is a Special Homecoming Show – (ft. a band that includes Sam Kelly, Kim Lowings, Minnie Birch & Kathleen P of Awake Mother (who will opening the evening with a special set of their own songs).