Some Albums #1 (Or Riding Out the Brum Blues)

Hip hop has been a constant in my life for over a decade. It’s part of the furniture, the gentleman on the mobility scooter in Wetherspoons come AM or PM. But I have come to realise hip hop has developed Alzheimer’s. It just repeats itself every time I drop by, but I keep coming back out of a sense of honour blind to the atrophy. 

To illustrate my point, ‘Don’t Be Dumb’ had all the finesse of a butcher’s circumcision. Rap has long been outcast from Rocky’s circle of interest and ‘Don’t Be Dumb’ feels like a concession to panhandling fans. I struggled to get through Tricky’s ‘Pre-Millenium Tension’ indulgences. I’d have an easier time golloping down a camel bollock for two cackling Jordies. ‘Ghetto Youth’ IS oddly hypnotic, but four minutes is a philanthropic run time for a random bloke Tricky found in Jamaica. ‘Stillmatic’ is to ‘Illmatic’ what Tim Westwood is to Clint Eastwood. Only someone with memories married to these songs could love that lurid album cover. Forget returning to basics, Nas should have returned that tracksuit to the set of Jim’ll Fix It. The album should have sounded like ‘One Mic’ – the last stand, John Marston out the barn. But I feel like Tony Robinson trying to convince myself that a shitty piece of terracotta is a ‘find’. All the hip hop I’ve consumed feels like the dregs at the end of a brew, naked and guilty. 

So, add that listening run, which could be compiled into Now That’s What I Call Morphine, to writer’s block and the speed of life and I found myself caught in the crossfire of an oppressive and relentless love triangle. For a while any chance of writing was about as fertile as a panda.

There was a time in my life when I was trying to break into the music industry. After an ill-fated turn as a radio emcee (some people have a face for radio, I had a voice for mime) and purchasing a metaphorically apt harmonica with a flat B note (I briefly thought I was a Jagger-esque messiah bringing 70s blues back to the masses, but I possessed all the reverence of a traffic cone in a student town), I settled on becoming a producer, hoping the equipment would mask a lack of musical talent. I used to watch videos of Blake fumbling around with samplers, drum machines, piano loops and whatever phrases came into his head. He didn’t try to create songs so much as beckon songs into being through what business acumen would label fucking about but was essentially a perseverance of curiosity. I quickly realised that passion alone lacked the integrity to bridge the gulf between dream and reality, but anyone that inspires me (even into naïve self-belief) deserves my respect. And I suppose it wasn’t mere circumstance as he’s inspired me once again.

Blake has always drawn greedily on love for his lyrical content, but ‘Trying Times’ is a focussed pining for connection in a time of emotional isolation and digital substitutes, where the general attitude towards love isn’t dissimilar to that a dog shows a lamppost. ‘I Had a Dream She Took my Hand’ is a personal emotional peak with this ethereal woman dissolving as Blake awakes. I have a personal stake in this track having had a dream where I fell in love with the ghost of a woman trapped in a mirror. I don’t remember her face or her voice, but I have a vague memory of the feeling we shared. We had a good life together. ‘Make Something Up’ is a fun concept, but it’s also touching because those made-up words and inside jokes are the most enduring memories. The delicately candid acoustic influences make the title track sound like a porcelain session snippet from ‘In Rainbows’. I’ve missed a few albums, so I don’t know if the acoustic shift is new or if I’m like the last kid in school to discover X-VPN to bypass the TalkTalk router family safeguard settings barring those hot MILFs. There are still some hip-hop influences here too (Blake visits the same care home as me clearly). ‘Walk Out Music’ and ‘Days Go By’ have that cartoonish, whimsical, wistful Tyler, The Creator production and the latter also samples Dizzee Rascal’s ‘I Luv U’ – a man after my own grime-y heart, and an interesting flip as the original track holds love in the same regard as the ‘keep your feet off the seat’ sign. 

Blake is a master of the stealthy crescendo. In less tender moments such as ‘Walk Out Music’ and ‘Death of Love’ he builds this earned scale and epicness. ‘Doesn’t Just Happen’ is the club ready vodka miniature in the cleavage banger. Dave rides the beat like it’s point break and for once I don’t find myself grinning at the thought of getting caught in the street and exorcising all aura when asked “hey, what are you listening to” and I try and suppress the blush as I reply “Dave”. ‘Rest of Your Life’ is a surprise quirky dance track. It takes me back to Lost Village where I had an out of body dance experience after popping two extras on an empty stomach. Our ingenious plan to masquerade cans of Stella in a tent peg bag was foiled when the steward unpacked the bag and the tent pegs stood bolt upright. We had to resort to drastic measures to get loose. But even throughout these detours, Blake’s voice possesses an earnestness that maintains a reflective thread across the genre hops (Although that is almost undercut by the cover where, at a glance, he appears to be playing the Guitar Hero drum set).

If I was fishing with my grandad, he would be calling me a Jonah. I feel about as lucky as a four-leaf clover growing out of Timothy Green’s arse as I always tune into artists just as their inspiration dissipates. ‘Through the High Wire’ onwards is an end of video YouTube ad. Perhaps it’s the early onset of boredom with the album. But if the past exists through memory, then I will always be grateful to these tracks that carried me over the red sky of Birmingham at daylight’s bookends like the Cushelle koala bear.

There’s a symbiosis between the evening sun and ‘Willy and the Poor Boys’. I don’t know which beckons which, but they always seem to cross my life together like a mirror image. Escapism is the way to ride out Birmingham for those who have known happier lives. I find it’s best to take a literal interpretation of the chorus of ‘Midnight Special’. I let the sun cast a light on my present woes as Creedence massage the complexities out of their impossible knots and charm the blues away cobra-like. There was a flash of lightning as the Yankee doodle and the Salvation Army Sgt. Pepper cover told me this would require the special grade of patience I reserve for phone calls with HMRC. My mind’s eye is lazy, and in its wonkiness, the grit and attitude and swagger went undetected until the ripples of wit reached my lonely peninsula halfway through. It’s the same boss-eyedness that conditioned the masses to think patriotically of ‘the flag’ when blasting ‘Fortunate Son’ over the thunder of fighter jet flyovers. The Poor Boys fit a lot of spirit into 35 minutes, it just needs some repeat listen polishing to appreciate opener ‘Down On the Corner’ for an eye-winking red herring.  

‘It Came Out of the Sky’ presents a typical rock and roll affair, but Fogerty paints a still of the circus, describing a Snatch-esque scramble to claim an alien artifact. ‘Poorboy Shuffle’ is limp but it earns its placement when played in sequence. Like the oxpecker that picks the shit off a rhino’s back, sometimes a lame intro gives the proceeding groove some more salt (see ‘Sounds of Science’ by the Beastie Boys for this phenomenon at its purest). The groove in question is the slinking ‘Feelin’ Blue’. It has a physical effect on my gait and puts a crease in my daydreams. Ironically, for a song about man condemned to hanging it makes me walk like a man who knows he’s already hung. ‘Don’t Look Now’ is a taciturn track, but with a bit of strain you’ll find lyrics like ‘Who’ll make the promises you don’t have to keep// Don’t look now it ain’t you or me’ provide a refreshing stance on the Summer of Love, even if it makes CCR sound like the owners of a pebble dashed house in Balamory. ‘Side O’ the Road’ is an almighty triple solo over a swaggering rhythm section as the Poor Boys empty their cartridges point blank like the closing of Goodfellas. And then there’s ‘Effigy’. A quite surreal, apocalyptic, biblical end to a grounded album. There’s a veiled sense of power and depth that isn’t present with the other tracks, like that chill that touches your soul when you encounter something quietly rare. 

Maybe it’s the concentrated dose of Buddhist, immaterial, bum living that I see reflected in the music of those Poor Boys. It has a cleansing property, whether soothing the ache or scorching the Earth, which marries nicely with the humbling windings on the road towards some measure of knowledge and acceptance of self. And I’ve walked holes into a pair of Reebok’s and Onitsuka Tiger’s, playing this album and trying to find the end to my sentence.