New Music 2018 - Part 15 - Beelzebub Jones - A Good Day To Be A Bad Guy

Not many artists choose midnight at the end of Easter Sunday to drop a new release. I guess if they do then there are not that many people just waiting to discover it and listen there and then. As it happens I was and not because I had any prior knowledge. I'd been out doing something completely different and got home in no mood to turn in. I needed some wind-down time first and needless to say this immediately caught my attention. Some things are just meant to happen and this collaboration between Andrew McClatchie (Half Deaf Clatch) and Richard Wall is, to paraphrase their own description, dirty cinematographic Americana.
It is the soundtrack to a spaghetti Western that you have never seen simply because it doesn't actually exist. You can therefore imagine the plot to suit yourself. The cover art might look rather daunting but do you judge everything by its cover? Music is as much about your imagination as it is about the people who make it.

Beelzebub Jones - A Good Day To Be A Bad Guy (Speak Up Recordings, 2 April 2018).

It is based on a short story by Richard Wall and that accompanies the limited edition of the physical release (CD, 100 copies) as part of the 26-page A5 booklet. Here's the play list to contemplate:

Nicotine, Liquor & Blasphemy

Whiskey For Breakfast

Dry, Dry Bones

Rattlesnake Interlude

The Heist

Death Of The Teller 

Never Take Me Alive

Sinners Last Request

Vultures

The Crossing Place 

Working For The Devil

Revenge Is My Only Friend 

Showdown

I can only presume that title 'Beelzebub Jones' is taken from a comic strip, with a Wild Western theme, that ran in the Daily Mail from December 1938 - December 1945. If that is true then it is quite something, if not it is an astonishing coincidence. The clapperboard is all yours.

New Music 2017 - Part 31 - Half Deaf Clatch - CrowSoul

As well as starting my consideration of all the new music that I have had the pleasure of finding or otherwise being introduced to in 2017 there is absolutely no shortage of brand new releases that are coming my way.  This is one of them.

A solo acoustic blues artist from the UK that I have seen live a couple of times --- Half Deaf Clatch is the project of Kingston-upon-Hull based Andrew McClatchie. This is stomp-box and (often slide) guitar accompanied music from the Humber "delta" of  East Yorkshire.  This is his latest release and whilst running for over forty minutes it comprises just two tracks. He is possibly a 'Marmite' thing – love or hate but nothing between.

CrowSoul - Half Deaf Clatch (Speak Up Recordings, 12 October 2017).

He is a determinedly independent artist (Speak Up Recordings is his self-run label) and also an extremely prolific one so if you like this style of music you are in luck. CrowSoul is his second full-length release of 2017. The other, which is of songs inspired by consideration of The Great War, is 'Forever Forward' that came hot on the heels of  'Simple Songs for These Complicated Times' (2016) and 'The Life and Death of A.J Rail (2015).

If you are having a Hallowe'en themed occasion in the coming weeks you could use this as part of the soundtrack.

New Music - Part 25 - Half Deaf Clatch - Simple Songs For These Complicated Times

Well what can I say?
It seems no time since I was writing about Half Deaf Clatch and the 2015 LP The Life and Death of A.J Rail. My memory isn't failing me here, I'm pleased to say, even though it was barely longer than a month back.
That was based on seeing Half Deaf Clatch live in Frome somewhat earlier when he also mentioned the possibility of a forthcoming EP, 'The Apocalypse Blues'. Well you can forget that idea. It has been has now taken on an entirely new dimension as a ten song LP.

Half Deaf Clatch - Simple Songs For These Complicated Times (self-released, 11 May 2016).

No frippery is evident in the song titles:

• The Hush Blues
• The Blinkered Blues
• The Apocalypse Blues
• The River Blues
• The Undertow Blues
• The Exodus Blues
• The Lost Blues
• The Struggle Blues
• The Countdown Blues
• The Elysian Blues

Just acoustic blues.
Added 16 April 2016: Here is an archive-based video, to accompany 'Apocalypse Blues', that draws on footage of nuclear weapon tests. Added 16 May 2016: Now the recognition of this is spreading across the Atlantic, as this review demonstrates: http://www.musicnewsnashville.com/half-deaf-clatch-simple-songs-complicated-times/

New Music 2016 - Part 16 - Half Deaf Clatch - The Life and Death of A.J Rail

I was sure that I had mentioned this before but it seems not. If I have then I'm simply going to do it again.
Sometimes it takes a really shit and needlessly frustrating day to make one realise just how important music is. And how healing it might prove to be. I had some ideas earlier this week about writing another "virtual trip in music" as the first amused me in the making and I now have several itineraries in mind.

Tonight however is the time for this, and simply this...

Half Deaf Clatch - The Life and Death of A.J Rail (2015, self-released).

I saw Half Deaf Clatch play live in Frome at an intimate gig last year and it rates amongst the best performances I saw all year. Great clawhammer banjo blues and slide guitar, without any ornamentation, combined with his gritty vocals and earthy songs.

I'm too frazzled to write a detailed review just now. On the other hand I'm delighted to see that I wasn't the only one to be so impressed. This (in English) is one such from across the water courtesy of Blues Magazine in the Netherlands.

Here, with archive video from the US Signal Corps that will be familiar in essence to some in the UK during the winter now ending, is the song '1927 Flood' taken from the above-mentioned album.

Half Deaf Clatch is very much on my list of artists to see live again and his other recordings are well worth searching out too. It just so happens that the artist comes from Hull, UK.

Note added 11 May 2016:
The Life and Death of A.J Rail is now one of the British Blues Awards 2016 finalists in the category 'Blues Album'.