Originally released in Norway in 2020 before being picked up by Talking Elephant for release on CD last year, here we find Matthews joining forces with Norwegian band The Salmon Smokers which features multi-instrumentalist Freddy Holm at the core. Matthews surely needs no introduction as the original lead singer for Fairport Convention before leaving to form Matthews Southern Comfort and then Plainsong and has had a long and illustrious career. I was fortunate enough to see Plainsong at Cropredy in 2017 when I travelled from one side of the world to the other to attend the 50th Anniversary Fairport bash, and he was one of the singers who greatly impressed me that night.
The concept behind this album was to revisit some of the material with which Iain has been involved with over the last 50+ years, and he came into the sessions with more than twenty choices, which were whittled down to eleven during the recordings. The end result includes solo material, songs from his time with both Plainsong, and Matthews Southern Comfort (of course there would be something wrong if “Woodstock” wasn’t included, here given a fresh leash of life which has me preferring it to the original). On top of that there is a new song in “I Threw My Hat”, plus two previously unrecorded numbers in “Reno, Nevada” which he used to perform in his Fairport days plus Dylan’s “It Takes A Lot To Laugh: which he regularly includes in his concerts.
Iain was born in 1946, and the album was released in 2020 so was probably recorded in 2019 which means he was 73 at that time, but one would never guess that from his voice. It still has the power and emotion we have all come to love over the last 50+ years of his recording career. In The Salmon Smokers he has a band who are well used to working with each other, which includes a multi-instrumentalist who is a consummate arranger, and the partnership works incredibly well as his vocals are kept to the fore and while the arrangements are complex and multi-layered, they act to drive the ears towards the vocals and not away. This means a steel may be an important instrument in one song, or a banjo, or violin, with a sympathetic rhythm section with an end result that this is in many ways a timeless album. It is probably only the production which lets the listener know that this is a modern release, as it could have come out any time in the last 40 or so years, and in a well-structured world this would be seen as a significant album.
As it is, we can all be grateful for Talking Elephant to taking the opportunity to make this available to a wider public and if you enjoy a singer who is still putting out wonderful acoustic folk and country influenced music, then this is for you.
Rating: 9/10
Track list:
1. Same Old Man
2. Ballad Of Gruene Hall
3. I Threw My Hat In
4. Something Mighty
5. Woodstock
6. Reno Nevada
7. Southern Wind
8. It Takes A Lot To Laugh
9. Following Every Finger
10. If You Saw Thro’ My Eyes
11. Keep On Sailing
Links:
https://talkingelephant.co.uk/
https://iainmatthews.nl/
https://www.facebook.com/salmonsmokers/
