Disc of the day
Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
Features Disc of the day
Johnny Flynn
A Larum
(Vertigo, 2008)
Youngest brother of Jerome "Robson and Jerome" Flynn - a lost folk balladeer for the Underage generation?
Walking past the Oxford Street HMV, on the muggy morning of the 9 September, 2009, as camera crews milled round the entrance, interviewing shoppers about The Beatles Remasters and Mercury Music Prize winner Speech Debelle, I found myself listening on the ipod shuffle to Cold Bread, a raggedy folk picaresque in which Flynn and his frayed and unadorned band sang the praises of a romantic London life on a shoestring budget. It was eerie, heartfelt, poetic and beautiful, tapping in to rock and folk's glorious past but moving it somewhere new and strange. If any artist deserved to be nominated for the Mercury Prize, let alone win it, it was Johnny Flynn. Back in 2007, amidst the skinny-trousered glottal stops of a thousand pseudo-plebeian rockers, Flynn stood apart. He played similar gigs, had similar fans and wore similarly skinny keks but Johnny Flynn was reaching for something more, looking beyond the Camden drug run of his peers to the blasted heath of King Lear. Against an acoustic swell of fiddle, cello and ukulele Flynn's songs sought out beauty and sadness in both the mountains green and dark satanic mills of a modern Britain. Here was someone digging deep into the loam of British history, unearthing such lost items as post-war integrity and youthful vim. In an age when perfidious Pete Doherty wouldn't know his Albion from his elbow, Johnny Flynn sounded like the new voice of olde England, interpreting the golden past to comprehend the dark future. With no UK radio play it's sold 40,000 worldwide, not harmed by the fact that Flynn is currently selling out venues across the States, where his album came out on the roots-cred Lost Highway label, home of Willie Nelson, Ryan Adams and Elvis Costello. If you live in London go and see him at The Union Chapel in Islington on 26 September and look out for the Sweet William EP in November and marvel at how this man can be overlooked in his own country.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 11/09/2009
Further Listening
Sam Amidon – All Is Well (Bedroom Community, 2007)
David Thomas Broughton – The Complete Guide To Insufficiency (Plug Research, 2005)
Richard Youngs – Under Stellar Stream (Jagjaguwar, 2009
Previous Disc of the day
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Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
Magnificent late-'50s singles round-up that keeps on giving.
6:00 AM GMT 20/11/2009
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Isley Brothers - The Brothers: Isley
The Cincinnati siblings bed into their heavy period.
6:00 AM GMT 18/11/2009
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Lee Morgan - Search For The New Land
The trumpeter's most soulful excursion entrances MOJO messageboarder.
6:00 AM GMT 16/11/2009
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