Following on from his hugely enjoyable foray into American hobo/boho folk’n’blues on Wrong Road Home, Glasgow’s Robin Adams returns to more familiar territory on Sun Behind The Storm, a brief eight song collection which is perhaps the most personal and elemental of his albums so far. It’s stark, just Adams and his guitar for the most part, yet within the bare bones of the songs there’s a sense of beauty and wonder, mixed with pools of despair and defiance. For those who suggest that Adams is following in the footsteps of singular singer/songwriters such as Nick Drake, John Martyn and Bert Jansch, the album goes a long way to confirm this.
There’s a sense that Adams is reflecting on the past here. The title song was originally released as a single 10 years ago but never made it onto an album until now. There’s also a song written when Adams was just 18 along with a song which first saw the light of day on an album, Refugee, curated by Adams back in 2016, a song which is increasingly pertinent today. There is certainly a nostalgic bent to the album for those of a certain age who remember the heyday of “bedsit” albums featuring earnest (and oft times tortured) young men pouring out their innermost thoughts. Having said that, Adams rises well above any such nostalgia, able to sit beside the likes of Will Oldham in his reclamation of folk music.
The album opens with the stunning title song. Adams’ guitar playing is quite beautiful here, so reminiscent of Jansch at times, while the song itself sees him finding solace in his belief that better days are ahead no matter how dark it seems. This slight sense of optimism is so fragile however that the overall feel of the song is one of uncertainty, of a hope that could easily be shattered, the singer withdrawing into a comfort zone of his own making. This inner world is further explored on Hit The Ground Running, a song which details the fragility of the balance between hope and despair as Adams sings “Doubt comes crashing down, breaking into fragments.” Catapult is a song written when a youthful Adams was struggling with depression. Closeted, agoraphobic, Adams rails defiantly against his dread mood, singing, “Don’t walk, don’t run, don’t go outside in the sun. Don’t have a life that goes beyond the thought of now – I don’t think so, somehow.”
The remainder of the songs are less introspective although several still pertain to personal experiences as on the charming To The Sea which Adams explains as being about the joy and anticipation one experiences whenever a seaside trip is planned. It’s a couthy Scots equivalent of all those CSN&Y songs which celebrate the ocean and is all the better for that. Sweet Sturnidae is the second song of the album which we would call stunning as Adams pulls out all of the stops, singing about the mesmerising spectacle of murmurations of starlings (Sturnidae being their orthinological name). Here he’s accompanied by Graham Smith (of String Driven Thing fame) on violin and Pete Harvey on cello and the song has a glorious autumnal feel.
Pushed And Pulled opens with a Dylan like harmonica wheeze as Adams goes into folk rock mode on a song which, with a Dylan like opaqueness, seems to refer to the plight of refugees. The song opens with the line, “We’re all ghosts floating out at sea, you and I and humanity” as Adams likens their plight to pawns on a political chessboard. It’s followed by the much more direct The Devil’s War And The Deep Blue Sea, originally recorded for a charity album. Sadly, it’s a powerful song which is even more pertinent today than when it was originally recorded. Overall, Sun Behind The Storm is quite breathtaking in its honesty and delivery.
Well, farewell 2021. It was nice while it lasted but you were too much of a tease, really, for it to go on much longer. We started going out only towards the end and then, when it seemed that we were getting on an even keel, you done went and got all frosty again, gigs gone, Christmas and New Year all but cancelled. One thing you did provide was a bumper crop of albums and for that we do thank you.
Here’s a list of Blabber’n’Smoke’s favourite albums of 2021 (although there are probably a couple we’ve forgotten). There’s a top ten, but not in any particular order, along with a list of runners up and special mentions at the end. Where possible we’ve linked the album title to a review (or interview in one case) of ours.
Only four gigs this year! Hopefully 2022 will bring us more great albums but more importantly and despite the dismal start, allow live music to live and breathe again.
A huge thanks to all the artists, promoters, PR folk, venues and fellow fans who all help Blabber’n’Smoke limp along. Happy New Year.
Normally a Robin Adams album leads one to search a thesaurus looking for alternatives to winsome, melancholic, introspective, sensitive and words like that. Adams’ albums have portrayed him as a singer songwriter very much in the folk/bedsit tradition with luminaries such as Bert Jansch and Nick Drake often summoned to serve as comparisons. Wrong Road Home is however a splendid change of direction as Adams delivers a lively, sometimes raucous, elsewhere tender, collection of songs, delivered in a folk and country style with a decidedly American bent. It’s noted that Canadian folk duo Kacy and Clayton appear on several of the songs.
The album is inspired by some of Adams’ favourite American songwriters – people such as Hank Williams and Michael Hurley (we’d add Woody Guthrie, The Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers to the pile) – while the music is a wonderful mix of string band excellence and hillbilly musings. Banjo, fiddle, mandolin, pedal steel, Dobro and, yip, a singing saw, all feature, giving the album an authentic patina of old time Americana and all that entails. There’s trains and crossroads and ghosts in these tales of bad luck and while the songs are a joy to hear there isn’t really a happy moment to be heard. Meanwhile, Adams’ drawings which adorn the sleeve and the lyric booklet are surely a nod to Hurley.
From the instance when lonesome banjo and harmonica wander in through the saloon like front door of the title song, sounding for all the world like two weary travellers looking for a drink, we’re transported to the old west as Adams wanders into a nether world peopled by talking dogs and crows and blind men shooting arrows at the stars. It leads him to what does seem to be a last chance saloon where, ordering beer, he is given absinthe while seated next to an artist with “a hole right through his chest” wondering why he isn’t dead. With ragged fiddle, lonesome pedal steel and a wearied lope in its stride it’s a tremendous opener. Deep Down follows in a similar style but it digs deeper into weird old Americana, freighted with menace emanating from “the old dark woods” where “gallows swing and the moon stays round.”
Listening to these two opening songs, the only clue that these haven’t been unearthed from some Appalachian archive is Adams’ voice which retains his Scots accent. It’s a fantastic balancing act which he maintains throughout the album and it offers the opportunity to think not only of the Americans he celebrates here but also those pioneers of the 60s such as Hamish Imlach and especially the original Incredible String Band. The fiddle sozzled blues of Broke Down Empire Blues here could surely sit on the first ISB album while the jug band like Nobody Blues is a song which Imlach would have had great fun with. The Scots-American union reaches its zenith when Adams transports Burns’ Tam O’Shanter to the Ozarks, yodelling away like Jimmie Rodgers on The Ballad Of Tommy Shanter. This is quite fabulous. The saw offers the requisite amount of spookiness but there’s so much else bustling away, the pedal steel, a fiddle sawing, swarms of accordion and burbling banjo, all jostle together and raise the song into the realms of greatness. It’s not hyperbole to say this really. If you doubt, then have a listen and keep an ear out for the way there’s a brilliantly brief burst of bowed double bass denoting danger towards the end.
Adams waltzes through the album excellently, unveiling gem after gem. Too Far Gone is a hum bucking slice of Western Swing and Hungry Bob reminds one of Burl Ives or Pete Seeger’s’ kiddie friendly songs (with a dollop of Shel Silverstein). While Your Games is a pretty, Jansch influenced, guitar trip which is more in line with his previous releases, Sing To Me As I Sleep is a trip into Carter Family territory and the closing song, Floorboard Blues is wonderfully rudimentary as Adams sings and yodels an old time waltz quite brilliantly.
It’s not often that an album stops you in your tracks but when we first heard this we were quite gobsmacked by how good it is. It’s a total diversion for Adams and it’s astounding that he’s pulled it off so brilliantly. It probably does help if you’re enamoured of old time Americana to begin with but, coming in at the tail end of the year, we reckon it’s one of our top ten contenders. https://robinadams.bandcamp.com/album/wrong-road-home
Glasgow singer and songwriter Robin Adams released his latest album, One Day, on his own HameWork record label last Friday. Recorded in his home studio, some of it during lockdown, it’s an excellent collection of gentle acoustic songs and it furthers the notion that Adams is one of the most talented musicians working in Scotland these days. A recipient of several song writing awards over his career, he has released six solo albums with Q magazine at one point describing his music as, “strummed ruminations worthy of John Martyn.”
While the John Martyn comparison kind of passes us by (unless it’s the innocent looking chap on the cover of London Conversations), Adams certainly evokes classic singer songwriters such as Nick Drake with whom he has also been compared to by others. Here at Blabber’n’Smoke we were much taken by One Day which we reviewed here. We were also able to catch up with him to discuss the album just as was preparing for a virtual launch gig which was to filmed at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe. We started off by asking Robin who had played on the album.
It’s all home made with me playing all the instruments with my friend Amanda Nizic helping out on vocals. I think that her voice is a really important part of the sound on the album and lifts it up. I’ve known her for several years know after we met at a party and sang together and she’s appeared on stage with me. She also plays the musical saw but unfortunately, there’s none of that on the album.
Your main instrument on the album is acoustic guitar along with very quiet piano and some percussion but I was wondering about the sounds you created towards the end of the last song, One Thing. Is that a string section?
It’s actually a mellotron and it allows for a really nice closure to the album. One Thing was actually the last song I recorded and the songs, as you hear them, are mostly in the chronological order I wrote them. The first half of the album was actually recorded some time ago and initially they were for an EP, which I never got around to releasing. Instead, I put them up on YouTube but then decided I could do a bit more with them. And then when lockdown happened I decided to try and write ten songs in ten days so I recorded a big batch of songs and for some reason I just felt that some of them fitted naturally with the first five songs which had been floating around and it just all came together quite naturally.
Listening to the album, I was reminded of artists such as Roy Harper and Alan Hull. I wouldn’t say that it’s a folk album but it has that element of the folk tradition that singer songwriters in the seventies were digging into.
I think it probably does have some of that influence in there but I also think that I’ve been able to put in some Neil Young Harvest like stuff in there, especially on Black Cloud. I mean I do like Roy Harper and artists such as Karen Dalton but I do feel that, in relation to my other albums, this one has a lighter feel and there’s definitely a seventies flavour to it.
You say there’s a lighter feel to the album but I thought there was also a melancholic air about the album. Black Cloud, which you mentioned, seems to me to be about fighting off a depressive mood.
Well, that’s something I’ve struggled with, like many other people. I was actually playing Black Cloud before you called, getting ready for the live show, and I think that it’s a song which will resonate with a lot of people and it’s a song which is going to last.
Although you live in Glasgow there’s not really what I would call an urban feel in your songs, you seem to take more inspiration from nature and the great outdoors.
I definitely prefer to be outdoors. I remember my big brother Chris taking me up north when I was a teenager and we’d climb mountains and stay in a bothy and that introduced me to this new world which really opened my eyes and inspired me as a writer. I think that due to my experiences up north and being close to nature that my songs just grew as did I as a person.
Of course, you can be in a city and still get close to nature. You made an album a few years back called The Garden which you said was inspired by looking out onto your garden from your bedroom window.
Well, there are a lot of themes on that album but that was part of it. I think you can get a lot from just seeing the subtleties in the atmosphere around you. The garden was another album I recorded at home but it was in a different house and there was a different atmosphere around. It was actually the house I grew up in and there was a slightly ethereal quality to recording in there.
Getting back to One Day, one of the songs, From A Dream, seems to be about the struggle between nature and urban blight as you sing about a wee Robin struggling to be heard above all the background noise. Although it was one of the songs recorded well before our pandemic lockdown, listening to it I was reminded that back in spring, as lockdown happened, birdsong appeared so much more apparent as traffic disappeared.
I think that at the beginning of lockdown, a lot of people were appreciating that aspect of it. I have a friend who saw a deer out in the street and it was kind of an eye opener as to how much we affect the world but then when we’re absent, nature starts to creep back in. It was a kind of bittersweet feeling but then when lockdown ended another friend of mine, George Tucker, who I played with in String Driven Thing, posted a picture online of a street littered with MacDonalds’ wrappings and said, “Ah well, back to normal.”
Talking of String Driven Thing, you have one of your father’s songs on the album, Market Covent Garden (Robin’s father is the late Chris Adams who had chart success in the seventies with his band which also featured his mother, Pauline).
That was a song he had written back in the sixties but he never recorded it. When was ill with cancer we were talking about his songs and he was quite sad as had never got around to recording this one. So we sat down and went through it to see if we could work out a version he liked. He pointed out bits and pieces of it and told me how he would have done it and finally I recorded it and let him hear it. I’m glad that he liked it, he actually said it was like a bird trapped in a cage and that I had set it free for him. It’s a beautiful memory and I’m always reminded of that time together whenever I sing the song.
That’s quite wonderful that Chris got to hear your version and it’s quite poignant hearing it on the album. It might be cheeky to ask but do you have a favourite song on the album?
Well, having said all that it definitely has to be my dad’s song, not one of mine. However, I think that Black Cloud has some kind of resonance but that might be just for now. I do think that the first five songs flow really nicely into each other and seem to be seamlessly related which is quite a difficult thing to achieve. But as a standalone song it’s probably Black Cloud.
Can I ask you about the cover art? I’ve been trying to figure out what is actually is.
While I was doing the ten songs project, I needed some image to put up with the songs on YouTube. There was a dollhouse sitting on a shelf in my house and underneath it there was an electrical box which a previous owner had covered with old wallpaper which I really liked so I just left it there on the wall. And my girlfriend took a photograph of me which I didn’t really like but in the background was the doll house and the wall paper and I thought that it would be interesting if I just cropped that section so I did and it really worked. So, basically, it’s just an old dollhouse on a shelf. Funnily enough, I really only had one song done at that point and I think that the image itself kind of inspired some of the songs from then on such as All Your Money, which is kind of light-hearted and you can see that the song and the picture are related. It’s the first time that I’ve ever had a cover before the album is finished so I was able to draw on that for inspiration.
You’re releasing the album on your own label, HameWork. Can we expect any other artists to join you on the label?
It’s called HameWork because everything’s done at “hame.” I record the music and then make the CDs at home and I’m hoping to have some other artists join me on the label who also have that DIY type of attitude. You mentioned Roy Harper earlier and when I was supporting his son Nick at a festival I met a guy called Nicky Murray who I’ve been talking to about releasing something on HameWork.
And with that we wrapped it up as Robin prepared for his show. You can see his launch show at The Glad Cafe via their Facebook page and you can buy One Day via Robin’s website here or from Bandcamp here.
There’s a well-trod tradition of fragility and nuance in the singer songwriter folk tradition, Nick Drake being perhaps the best-known example. Delicate musings, as friable and beautiful as a spider’s web on a frosty morning can catch many emotions although they tend to veer towards introspection. For some reason, nature, and in particular, the seasons feature often, the writer observing their surroundings, more likely to be comforted by birdsong as opposed to hale and hearty greetings.
Glasgow’s Robin Adams is one such artist and at Blabber’n’Smoke we were mightily impressed by his impressionistic album, The Garden, back in 2015, where he delivered a fine set of songs inspired by the outlook from his window onto his garden while musing on his own struggles with his state of mind. One Day surpasses this as Adams offers up ten songs which follow a similar path but, to our ears, eclipse the earlier album.
The album opens with Adams almost whispering over an attractive soft shoe shuffle on A Friend Of Mine. His mild Scots’ brogue, the delicate guitar and subdued piano with brushed drums along with wispy harmonies set the scene for much of what follows. Recorded at home with Adams playing all the instruments and ably assisted by Amanda Nizic who adds her superb vocal support to Adams, the disc is one of those for which the word bucolic was coined but beneath the feather light delivery there is a seam of melancholy.
Dancer In Your Eyes has some of the lyrical qualities of early Incredible String Band woven within it while No Reason Why is somewhat breathtaking in its almost Presbyterian solemnity with Adams’ coming across as if he were a sweet voiced Ivor Cutler fronting Pentangle. That Cutler sense is maintained when a brief spoken interlude, a very proper sounding vintage BBC reporter, bridges into the next song, From A Dream, another excellent number which is perhaps the most folk like song here. Lyrically, Adams sets out the struggle between nature and civilisation as his “wee red robin” strains to be heard amidst the city sounds. With a rousing refrain, this song deserves to be heard far and wide.
While there is some gaiety on the winsome All Your Money, the remainder of the album is stolidly rooted in melancholy and, on a song written by Adams’ father, nostalgia. Market Convent Garden was written in the sixties by Chris Adams (of String Driven Thing fame), but never recorded. Adams Jnr. does his dad well as the song comes across like a hidden gem from the heyday of bedsit albums. However, the highlight of the album is perhaps Adams’ most personal song, Black Cloud. In its perfect simplicity and brevity, Adams approaches the darkness which clouded the likes of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett but here he is defiant as he rallies against it.
Simultaneously low key and spectacular, One Day is a delight to listen to.
If you live near the Shawlands area on the south side of Glasgow you might have seen Robin Adams striding along, usually with his guitar in bag strapped to his back, his lion’s mane head of hair flowing in the wind, he’s quite a striking sight. Fortunately, he’s quite a striking musician as well with his previous albums gathering a bit of a cult following, similar to that of the late Nick Drake three decades ago when Drake was known to only a few cognoscenti. Reviews of Adams’ previous works have compared him to Drake and John Martyn (the Martyn comparison is odd other than that they share a Glaswegian background) but there are some elements of Drake to be found here. There’s a melancholic feel to the lyrics and a bucolic air in the music but the comparison ends there, to these ears it’s the likes of Roy Harper, Robin Williamson, Bert Jansch and Will Oldfield who come to mind with beguiling melodies and lyrics that can be darkly beautiful.
Adams stares that The Garden was influenced by his thoughts on Vincent Van Gogh, the painter’s struggles with his internal turmoil, his darkness and light. However, the album’s hazy sameness, an almost repetitive search for peace recalls another painter, Monet who captured the likes of Reims Cathedral in different lights at different times of the day trying to capture the illusive nature of light. Monet ended his years obsessively painting his garden at Giverny. As with light so with sounds and Adams, perched in his bedroom overlooking his garden, offers variations on this theme.
Overall The Garden is the sound of one man and his guitar. Occasional harmonica, keyboard, percussion and bass intrude and there’s a cello on one of the songs. A fine guitarist with a wisp of a voice that only occasionally betrays its Glaswegian origin, Adams roots around in the soul of despair. He cites Rimbaud’s description of a soldier’s corpse (Sleeper In The Valley) as inspiration and this is most obvious on the apocalyptic lyrics of Collision Course that closes the album while the opening song, The Garden is full of foreboding with spilled blood fuelling the garden’s growth. Paint Me The Day is almost iridescent as Adams sings of “burning red skies over fields of gold flowing like rivers of colour all born from your soul.” Packed full of beautiful metaphors it’s a powerful plea for love. Throughout the album Adams displays a fantastic poetic bent, his words paint pictures, impressionistic, not story telling but allied to the slight Americana touch in Keep Me or the naked guitar lines of Troubled Skies he is riveting, demanding a replay to properly savour the songs. The Garden isn’t an album to put on as background music, it demands and repays close attention and the rewards are there with Street a magnificent meditation on the fragility of the human condition. With the devastating opening lines “your heart is made of paper, your life is made of glass so beware of those who reach for you” delivered over a rippling guitar that recalls Arthur Lee’s Love on Forever Changes, the end result is sublime. Meanwhile Need Not Turn is perhaps the best song Will Oldham hasn’t yet written.
The Garden is a wonderful listen for those who delve into the nooks and crannies of a songwriter’s mind, it flows, brackish and dark perhaps, but seeking an outlet.
Robin Adams is launching the album at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe on Saturday 4th April.
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