In February this year, Jim Ghedi released Wasteland. The album followed four years after his highly acclaimed 2021 album, In the Furrows of Common Place. As he prepares to set out on tour next month to present and play Wasteland for the second time this year (dates below), the weight of this album seems heavier and more relevant than ever.
In his review of Wasteland, Thomas Blake outlined how Ghedi’s previous “angry and impassioned folk opus sounded a dire warning about the dangers of environmental social collapse in a post-capitalist society. It was delivered through gritted teeth, often relying on a beautiful harmonic flourish or seamless forays into traditional song and the poetry of John Clare to convey its message, which was one of hope in a nearly hopeless world.” Comparing Wasteland, he adds, “Wasteland feels like a natural follow-up. Its themes are similar, but it is bigger, darker, stormier and more focused…in many ways, it is an album about England, about its curious, disjointed history, its rich heritage of song and performance, and its scary and troubled present.”
He also drew connections to T.S. Eliot’s poem of the same title, regarded as one of the most important English-language poems of the 20th century, about cultural collapse and collective trauma — a search for meaning and redemption in a fragmented society. He states: “…it would be easy to suggest that the wasteland in question is England in its current state, but there is a sense of presentiment, a prophetic strain to Ghedi’s songs that might imply that the worst is yet to come. This – the prophetic tone and the ambiguity – is something that the album shares with the T.S. Eliot poem whose title it mirrors.”
He concludes that, “for all its anger and anguish, Wasteland provides us with many such moments of beauty. It is a timely reminder of the potency of art in a world that seems to be turning uglier by the day, and it might just be Jim Ghedi’s masterpiece.”
Ghedi and his band are exceptional live performers, so if you missed it the first time around, now’s your chance to experience Wasteland… “a form of music that feels rooted in deep time, and that feeds off ancient natural energies but always confronts the most urgent contemporary issues with unflinching honesty.”
Tour Dates
Tickets: http://www.jimghedi.com/tour
9th November – Chester, St Mary’s Creative Space
10th November – Newcastle, The Common Room
11th November – Glasgow, Rum Shack
12th November – Edinburgh, The Voodoo Rooms
13th November – Ipswich, The Smokehouse
16th November – London, The Grace
17th November – Birmingham, The Sunflower Lounge