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Review: 'OWEN MCAULAY'
'THE LINE'   

-  Label: 'SANS CULOTTES'
-  Genre: 'Indie' -  Release Date: '21st November 2014'

Our Rating:
These songs are fragments of neglected lives, captured by an insider and offered with affection and honesty by the inestimable OWEN MCAULAY. I have written of Owen before. I have always admired and enjoyed his deadpan approach to tenderness, to disappointment and to fragile melody.

He doesn't shock, he doesn't mope or rage, he doesn't weep. But give him a half hour of your close attention and you will drift imperceptibly into the subdued intensity of an anonymous Glasgow life that has its mystery and depth gently opened up through Macaulay's subtle poetry and direct music. It's strength is its integrity and direct honesty. You will find no pretty embellishments but you will find much to touch the heart.

"Adam's Ale" is an outstanding example of the album's almost predatory allure. There's hardly a pulse at the opening. The least guitar and the fewest words do enough work for a whole major scene of scarily ambiguous drama. "this is cosy" he intones. Is it? I'm afraid you'll have to do your own listening. A critics bludgeoning reinterpretation of such condensed expression seems even more presumptuous than usual. Owen MacAulay is a mature writer and he respects the ambiguity of human understanding. He writes and sings of what he knows in a style that fits his purposes, he leaves it to you to make something of it.

Let me mention the anger. It's subdued and it's gentle but it hurts just the same. It's domestic in "time to wait" and it's political in "missed opportunity (a comedy in three acts)". I Would put this album's closing song in with Dick Gaughan's work. It's profound folk music for a traduced people. "they sent the scary men to frighten us… it worked".

As the frightened NOES of that song about unfinished constitutional business we go back to a purring cat in a timeless Glasgow sitting room and I ponder memories of Ivor Cutler and The Thirteenth Note Cafe. Scotland, before and after all, is another country.

The album was recorded in a Scottish front room. It includes guitar and accordion contributions from Michael Feeney and snatches of singing from Arthur Johnstone, Gordon McCulloch and Doris Day. William Owen Patrick drew the cover picture of his Grandad (giving him an appropriately owlish look) and the wee lad played a perfect keyboard solo on "the tiny house".

buy from cdbaby at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/owenmcaulay2

CD case linocut print based on drawing by William Owen Patrick
  author: Sam

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OWEN MCAULAY - THE LINE