Tuesday 5 January 2010

Alphabet of Hurricanes




After your wise, funny, critical, thoughtful and occasionally absurd advice for my press release, I thought I'd share with you what poet Simon Armitage wrote about the new record.

I know it's a bit unfair, especially as you haven't heard the album yet, although there is a free download in the offing! But hopefully you'll be as pleased as I was, as Simon is a hero of mine. It also gave me something to show my family, who still think I work at a donkey sanctuary or something, and are of the opinion that at 40 I should have a real job by now. I especially agree with the opening line - I think he captured me perfectly and with such economy.

Alphabet of Hurricanes


Tom McRae is a smart guy. I’m not just talking about the natty suit-jacket and waistcoat he’s wearing on the cover of his new album The Alphabet of Hurricanes, or the neat way he seems to be goading the dark skies by holding a knackered red brolly, like a storm-battered poppy, to the approaching tempest. I’m talking about the records he makes, and their unapologetic intelligence in a world where popular music has pawned its soul to the television schedules and the light entertainment industry. For four albums and the best part of a decade McRae has followed his own star, gone his own way, been true to those convictions laid down at the very beginning and loyal to his own distinctive brand of song-writing. He believes in language, not just words, and he trusts the silences that sometimes appear in songs – those gaps which open up between verses or even between notes, into which our imaginations pour. Yes there are touchstones: Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Dylan, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Vic Chestnutt, but they’re stepping off points rather than destinations, and what McRae shares with them is the idea of song as an art form. In fact craft might be a more appropriate word as far as McRae is concerned: the song as a kind of craft in which we might float or sail, and the craft required to construct such a vessel.
And now there’s album number five. But what is The Alphabet of Hurricanes? Well, it’s a shipping-forecast of memory, a lexicon of the soul’s meteorology, a Rosetta Stone in the shape of a heart. From Still Love You with its scratchy ukulele and thinned-out voice, like a song through a pinhole-camera, if you can imagine how that would sound. To A is For… with it’s snake-charming, side-winding, fist-strangled clarinets. To Won’t Lie which comes into town under a sombrero on a slow brown donkey with tumbleweed at its heels, and takes a seat next to the band at the back of the saloon, and starts doing its thing until everyone in the bar stops fighting and drinking and starts listening and singing and waltzing. To Summer of John Wayne with its dark piano and minor chords, which has the feel of a slowly resolving black and white photograph on a mantelpiece or an old cine film with the end of the reel ticking away. To the gospel roundelay of Told My Troubles To The River. To the dusk-lit American Spirit, a song sung from the edge of the known world as the sun halves itself in the ocean and McRae’s shipwrecked voice breaks the surface of the water. To the double-tracked Please, which evolves from a toe-tap to a knees-up to a full-blooded stomp and a plea for release, the singer telling us that he doesn’t care anymore when we know damn well that he does. To Out Of The Walls where a songs sits down at the piano while everyone else is asleep and makes its midnight confession, and madness is at the door, and moonlight is at the window, and the song goes on reverberating through the wires and the keys long after the lid has been closed and the light’s gone out and the room stands empty. To the finger-clicking, hand-clapping Me and Stetson which gets us back on our feet again, a guitar line like a mosquito buzzing around in the background, a horn section to blow your hat off, the voice jumping about in a locked trunk with a megaphone and a dictionary before the ambulance arrives. To Best Winter, simple, beautiful, spare, terse, honest, intimate, a public declaration of private matters, a particular examination of universal concerns, handing on to the unravelling storyline of Fifteen Miles Downriver which begins with the unreliable clasp of snakeskin bracelet and ends mid-ocean, middle of nowhere, back of beyond, happy to drift but with one eye on the possibility of land, plotting a course with one of the best lyrics I’ve heard in years.
These are ghost songs by one of our best living song-writers. The world needs more Tom McRae. And, as luck would have it, here it is.

Simon Armitage

21 comments:

  1. Wow! I can see why Simon is your hero and obviously Simon can see why you are ours!

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  2. Beautifully written, unsurprisingly.

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  3. Thank you for sharing with us.
    I'm so excited!!!

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  4. What a wonderful piece, it just makes me more excited about the new album - together with the songs we've heard and the snippets on Amazon, I cannot wait to hear it. Roll on February...

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  5. Simon's piece on you and the new album pulls you in, in the same way your songs do. He has done you and the new album absolute poetic justice. If I were a music fan desperate to find a true and meaningful singer/songwriter who still remembers what real music is all about, then Simon's words will have had me very curious to go seek out this rare gem that is lacking in the often,fake music jungle we have to endure.

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  6. how does he do that? "Still Love You" sounds exactly like a song might through a pin-hole camera - or an Edison-style cup phonograph (that's why we were fooled..).
    Very cool to have Simon Armitage write about you and for us fans to know we share his good taste!

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  7. If I weren't so grown up, I would say "holy crap, you must be good at blow jobs!".

    ...but wonderful endorsement, beautifully written.

    Is that a whiff of optimism in the air? Don't smile yet, think of the wrinkles!

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  8. moi pas ĂȘtre content6 January 2010 at 14:26

    I've heard a little part of your new album, it seems to be strange(it is positive)and unreal.Well i think Simon Armitage brightly describe everything and compared to his lightness we all sound crappy.
    I'm so angry at a point that you can't imagine. I'd buy a fucking ticket to see you in Paris, i've never had the chance to see you in concert before(violins please) i didn't have enough money(idem),now that i have the money your only concert is already FULLLLLL!!!!I'm cursed!!!!!!!!!!

    The moral of all this is: Money is shit!
    Leave in cavern avoid frustration.

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  9. Said nothing about the beard, though, did he? Hmmmm?

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  10. I thought he was a poet?? was expecting.. There was a young man from Nantucket?? to appear somewhere there :p
    and where's 'I Knew a Girl' on that list, if that's not on one of these Alphabet discs I'll buy ten James Blunt albums in protest!!

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  11. Any news on part 2 of the album? Will it still be released this year? I seriously need the song "Alphabet Of Hurricanes" in good quality.

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  12. Awfully well written... and awfully true (though I haven't heard the fifth album yet, I agree with what he said concerning your work)!

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  13. What the HELL are you doing McRae?? You've left The Alphabet Of Hurricanes off the album. Why? It's a SPECTACULARLY beautiful song...one of the best you've written.

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  14. Really... I've read most of what people wrote about you below the previous articles: with that many people supporting you how could we dare suggest Simon Armitage isn't true?

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  15. That, Mr McRae, was very mean. How can you post such a fantastic review by Simon Armitage and keep us waiting for another 2 months??? Now could Mr Armitage please put the album on the internet for us to download...? Just kidding, we would never do a thing like that!

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  16. marko - I utterly agree. How tantalising!

    BTW Tom, you look incredibly hot at 40. Damn. Nice waistcoat. I approve.

    Armitage is totally right of course...

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  17. Brill. Extra 's' here though: "where a songs sits down". Sorry Simon :D

    P.S, Stetsons, tumbleweed - when did you turn into such a cowboy?!

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  18. I love the proud Tom. :) oh, I cannot wait for the new album.

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  19. I'm reading again what Simon Armitage wrote while listening to your album.

    It's like watching soul mates interact, and suddenly I feel like a voyeur (I couldn't write Peeping Tom, could I?).

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  20. Duubduduh ladiedadie!~lifestyle~

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