With solo releases “six songs” and “the dig up e.p.” establishing him as a serious and fascinating artist, long-time SMACKVAN stalwart OWEN MCAULAY now brings us the 13 pieces of “less than factual”.
It’s strong stuff. Without a gradual acclimatisation and the resulting admiration of “six songs” and “the dig up e.p.” bearings may become lost in a Glasgow fog of scary and deceptive proportions. Opening track “quite the thing” takes things up at the fringes of last outing’s “the fence”, which balanced silence and gut wrenching sax against a psyche on the edge. The multiple sax pile up of “quite the thing” is not where you would expect a killer album to start.
But be reassured. Owen is worth following down these dark alleys. Don’t rush to conclusions or decisions. He knows the territory, and he has a doleful vision of beauty among the tar barrels, rat scavenged bins and night shelters of the soul. “short tune” comes next, playing single guitar notes against a gently clicking pulse and adding almost inaudible squeals in the highest registers. (Are they really there … is it my imagination?) for a minute and a half. It’s not quite enough to start wondering if there’s a problem. Next comes a pattern of four chords and minimal percussion heralding a harmonic richness on the scale of something epic by LOW. “my star” is intensely beautiful and doesn’t flinch from adding a distant bell at intervals too wide to count. The lyric is a meditation on the hugeness and isolation of space. And, spoken though it almost is, it has a haunting tune, coloured most delicately by Alan Parker’s wonderfully attuned backing vocal.
And so the album proceeds. There are no easy resting places on the journey. Harmony, silence, melody and carefull separated textures are Owen’s mysteries and fascinations. Guitars saxophones and electronic scuffles are the brush strokes and outline tools. Half remembered or partially observed scenes build a confusing townscape of lyrical intensity. Owen’s voice goes through a range of persona, including an elderly European immigrant mourning his partner against a gaunt chapel organ. Jauntiness, despair and whimsy tumble over each other so tears, rage, sadness and hilarity mess things up good and proper.
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But more than anything, OWEN MCAULAY loves to transform the meanness of the world by giving it a patient and carefully observed soundtrack. Like some bleakly beautiful film of the downside of life in the city, it doesn’t neutralise or prettify. It recognises and acknowledges how things are and reminds us how the imagination can make and keep us free.
This album won’t be for everyone. It doesn’t rip and roar or preach. But it does laudable things to the ears and the spirit, cleaning both up for another attempt at life. I think that you should be tempted to visit www.jockrock.co.uk and see if they won’t sell you a copy. You sure won’t find it in HMV. You will love it, because you made the effort and because OWEN MCAULAY has a sense of audience as well as a mania for invention, simplicity and discovery.
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