MARTYN JOSEPH
Troubled Horses
I’ve often mulled over whether the epithet, “The Welsh Bruce Springsteen” and seemingly constant comparisons with the Long Branch, New Jersey artist has harmed or enhanced Martyn Joseph’s career. However, I reached the conclusion, some time ago, that such deliberations were worthless, from both an academic viewpoint and from that of a simple, music lover. What then, to make of an album which has already drawn so many comparisons to the former’s Nebraska or Ghost of Tom Joad, which has patently been the case for Troubled Horses, the latter’s latest and 29th studio album?
I would say ignore any such correlations, and enjoy Troubled Horses for what it is, quite simply one of the finest albums yet from one of the world’s finest singer-songwriter/performers. End of.
Voice, guitar, harmonica, microphone, basic, ‘live’ recording, no studio jiggery-pokery. No problem. Oh, and get it all in the can within five days.
Such a modus operandi will not only reveal inadequacies but amplify them, thus the process demands that not only must every single element deliver a 10 out of 10, but the raw material, i.e. the songs themselves, must be of the highest calibre. Rest assured that with Troubled Horses all boxes have been unequivocally ticked, and that Martyn has fully succeeded in, indeed exceeded, achieving his objective, namely “I wanted to create a record that felt up-close and personal. Songs that are sitting right next to you, on the edge of too close for comfort.” As he further elaborates, “Over the years I’ve aspired to make records that capture the impact of my shows where the audience is moving through a song with you, whereby they somehow inhabit the work with you. On these new songs I feel like I’ve captured something of that essence…as if I’m performing right there in the room for whoever has turned up.”
A times intensely personal, the songs run the gamut of the human condition - compassion, darkness, despair, doubt, empathy, endurance, hope, light, resilience, strength and struggle, alongside the battle against the inevitable aging process. Stylistically, the songs generally follow a tried, tested and successful format, create a great melody, ensure variation by employing different guitar techniques, write top-drawer lyrics, throw in a bit of harmonica and incorporate a chorus that will ensure live performance audience participation.
Opening track ‘Let Me Hear Your Voice’ adheres to this format. A plea for help, “Hey lover can you help me now” to escape some sort of confinement “can’t get no release”, with a further entreaty to “Throw down a ladder so I can climb up there to a higher ground”, suggesting a desire for a lifeline enabling redemption.
A fine example of the self-referential technique known as metasong follows, in ‘My Song And My Psalm’, as Martyn espouses the view that “I’m not looking for a song to outlast me, That speaks in a thousand years, I’m looking for a song that illuminates now”, before ‘Eternal Wandering’, featuring some fine guitar-picking, muses on a journey of doubt which contains the gem of an observation “Someone told me once that faith's a trick that's up your sleeve, I said, well maybe doubt is just belief that's been set free".
The album’s title track is a magisterial piece, both musically and lyrically. Never one to shy away from wearing his social conscience and desire for showing compassion on his sleeve, the poignancy of “once children, now an uproar, the violence of the lambs” hits home hard, as does his visceral take-down of the absurd right-wing rhetoric with “There’s no country to ‘want back’ if we’ve all come from elsewhere.”
The two songs which follow also fall within the political vein. Firstly, ‘Each Day’, apologies for the expression, seems very much a song of two halves. The blues-infused guitar offers a variation in style and whilst initially the lyrics highlight the current levels of corruption and paucity of quality political leadership, “Each day the ignorance manifests as power… Each day the poet, each day the fraud, the hero unspoken, the fool gets applause” (insert your own politicians’ here), in the second half optimism is suggested, with the repeated use of the words “Each day...” once more, but this time instilling a sense of hope, “Each day the courage, that still survives, Each day the love that still resides.” Secondly, ‘Last Night I Heard America’, co-written with Stewart Henderson and released as a single, can be seen as a lamentation on a, possibly idealised, ‘lost America’, as place names featured in some of the most iconic songs to have emerged from the country are referenced, alongside other lyrics which create absorbing visual images, before the song ends with a plea “Come back home America…before everything gives way.”
Autobiographical, or at the very least personal and inward looking, sentiments are present in both ‘I Wonder I Do’, which reflects upon self-doubt, even regret, and the self-explanatory ‘Getting Older’, with harmonica very much to the fore, which rather than bemoaning the passage of time is celebratory in its outlook “I’m getting older, but it’s not so bad, I’ve got a heart full of gratitude, for all I have...it's such a blessing, To stand here and sing you this song".
Martyn’s accomplished finger-picking style is again evident on ‘Mary’s Tears’, the story of the Last Supper and Crucifixion, which focuses very much on Mary Magdalene. Certainly a love song with a difference, the delivery of the final line is a stunner “Mary I said don’t go, it will only end in tears”.
With penultimate track, ‘In A World That Breaks Your Heart’, the lyrics suggest the pressures of modern life taking their toll and the need to remain optimistic, the chorus in this one is surely ripe for enthusiastic audience participation, as evidenced by what, to these ears, is the only bit of multi-tracking on the album.
The album closes with another winner, ‘Let’s Take Care of Us’, in which the message seems clear, with family, positive relationships and compassion, ‘as long as we have each other, then we will prevail’. Name-checking Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, famously in love with each other, is the perfect reference point, and who could fail to be moved by “When everything else seems to hold us in time, Let's take care of us darling, all yours and all mine, … Your light in my darkness, your dream in my hand".
Troubled Horses is a compelling album, worthy of serious examination.
