More of the deep, haunting acoustic mastery we've come to know and adore from Glasgow's most promising singer-songwriter
When I first heard Grant Campbell’s music I was moved to go out of my way to get hold of his album, and I was so taken aback that I pushed it on all of my friends, all the people I met and the music press-reading public, I wanted to endorse this low, hard-voiced troubadour with his guitar and train-track rhythms and I gave his 2005 debut ‘Postcards From Nowhere’ a very praising review. I was in awe.
And now he’s back, his second album arrived in my mailbox a few days ago, and again I haven’t been able to get it off my playlist. It has humble beginnings, you almost feel as if you’re intruding on a man writing a sweet little song on an acoustic guitar on his own in a smoke-lit room with ‘Bowery Beat’, but it’s the start of a journey, a journey that builds and builds, that leads to a destination dreamy and ethereal. As the artist himself has commented: “The end product is intended to be a long-player that picks you up and a little over fifty-seven minutes later drops you off somewhere else with a sense that you’ve forgotten where it all started. At least that’s how I’d like to remember it.”
On the album we’ve got a reworked rendition of the already somewhat established ‘Careless Words’ which is an astonishing classic record, it’s midnight, whisky bar reminiscence of country gravel paths walled with green trees, it’s the depths of a soul stretched out in front of us, we’re privy to this man’s innermost being and the result is heartrending. But we’ve got more lively folk ‘n’ roll bursts of excitement too, like ‘Red River’, with its Spanishy and roll-on feel.
As we get to the emotion-steeped ‘Lila’ we’re reminded of Mark Lanegan’s soft and soothing tones, especially his work with Isobel Campbell, and we get nuances of a maturity in both musical style and subject matter, Grant Campbell’s music displays the richness of theme and conviction of early Springsteen met with the lilting laid-back manner of later Bob Dylan, it’s a glorious concoction of truthful soulful melancholy that’s as uplifting and relaxing as Drake, Cohen and Jeff Buckley.
The highpoint of the album is certainly its title-track; a subtle, mild picked opening gets torn down by a towering vocal which domineers until the sweet and gently rocking rhythm annexes the song and sets it on a straight course right to the centre of your soul, it’s a brilliant late-night number, a lullaby to the senses as much as wakener to the emotive mind. Pure genius.
The long-player comes to an end via some other great songs, the ‘Tambourine Man’-like ‘Starting Line’, the silky tearful ‘Lowlands’, majestic in its beauty, and the softest, homeliest finisher ‘Before We Start to Forget’. Altogether the second album is an extremely worthy follow-up to the sensational first, ‘Beyond Below’ is not an album that can be forgotten, the experience of it will engrave Grant Campbell’s name on your mind and every re-hearing of it will move you again to a place where your soul’s comfortably numb.