Wherever they go, whatever they do, Scots never truly leave Scotland. And so it is that Chris Connelly, having achieved legendary international status with Ministry, Revolting Cocks, and Murder Inc to name but three, comes together with Monica Queen for The Birthday Poems, an album to celebrate the 100th birthday of Orkney-born poet George Mackay Brown. Brown spent the majority of his life on the island of Orkney, and there focus if his writing and recognition remained largely localised until his death is 1981 (although he did receive and OBE in 1974).
This is a highly imaginative work: rather than being a collection of Brown’s poems set to music, The Birthday Poems is ‘a fictionalized account of the romance between celebrated Scottish poet and author and his muse Stella Cartwright, as well as Stella's friendship with
Edinburgh born poet Stanley Roger Green, spanning three decades (from the mid 1950s until Stella’s tragic and untimely death in 1985). As such, the songs are set around Connelly playing the part of Broen, and Queen in the role of Stella, and the eighteen compositions present a dialogue, although following its trajectory isn’t a prerequisite for appreciating the album, which is richly melodic and highly accessible.
The songs themselves are incredibly varied in style and delivery. ‘Stella, Dan and Dostoyevsky’ is a jazzy effort, with tinkling piano and propelled by a shuffling rhythm, and it finds Connelly sounding laid-back and louche, while immediately after, the Queen-led vocals on ‘A Minor Hoolie’. The ragged folk of ‘Tae the Poets’ is perhaps one of the most overtly Scottish songs on the album, with its hollering vocal refrain and a backing that undeniably carries hints of Prefab Sprout. ‘We write because we have to’, Connelly sings, summarising in a nutshell the creative bent. It’s a compulsion: few poets choose to become poets. Elsewhere. ‘What Strangeness Light and Dark’ is a spoken-word piece, set over soft strings, where Connelly waxes lyrical about the industrial landscape, and then tapers into soft ambience and a delicately picked guitar.
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‘The Lowland Fulcrum’ is a gloriously dreamy croon, rich in layers of harmonic melodies with a lush 60s pop influence, while ‘A Rain Soaked Idyll’ is a laid-back and fully folksy tune, and across the album they really do explore a broad span not only of musical stylers, but ways of articulating a wide-ranging emotional breadth.
Connelly and Queen fully inhabit their characters for the duration of the album, and The Birthday Poems is a strong work of both musical and literary merit.
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