If you don’t already know John Donaldson, you really ought to get acquainted with him. He’s been fronting under-rated Probe Plus combos Levellers 5 and (more recently) Calvin Party for over two decades now and making a highly commendable racket along the way.
As JD MEATYARD, however, he’s an enigma of a wholly different stripe. Although the last Calvins album ‘Godard’s Girlfriend’ (2008) found him embracing a poppier streak than usual, this time he’s stripped it back altogether and gone for an intimate, primarily acoustic approach falling somewhere ‘tween low-watt indie and agit-folk. JD’s guitar and vocals are usually centre stage, though Johan Visschers contributes rudimentary, Mo Tucker-style drums while further flecks of colour such as mandolin, cello, accordion and banjo are painted in by Jim Donaldson and CP multi-instrumentalist Dave Thom.
As a result, ‘JD Meatyard’ isn’t quite a ‘group’ record, but it’s hardly yer average acoustic singer/ songwriter meat’ n’ potatoes fare either. The raga-style overload of ‘Olive Tree’ is about the most consistently noisy thing here, though the sorrowful ‘Make My Life Better’ and the loose, but weirdly optimistic, roots-tinged ‘Anna K’ are all spirited, endearing and just slightly soused. Brighter and filled out by electric guitar, meanwhile, ‘MySpace Star’ (“Twitter me, twitter me, Facebook, twitter me!”) is wonderfully cynical (virtual) fun and also the poppiest track here.
Elsewhere, a desolate’ n’ sparse take of Hank Williams’ ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ passes the Kleenexes to the equally hurt’ n’ blue pin-drop ballad ‘No Place Like Home’ (“remember the promises we made...I wonder how you sleep the night?”) while there are a couple of great, what-the-fuck-was-that? moments courtesy of ‘Sad Song of a Singer/ Songwriter’ and ‘Bob’s Song’. Perhaps best of all is the finale – ‘St. Peter at the Gate’ – a modern day Pete Seeger-style song of freedom (“I don’t wanna be a corporate banker, no corporate banker!”) where JD lays into the shadowy forces currently dragging us towards the economic abyss with feeling and then some.
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JD Meatyard, then, is first and foremost a humanitarian and these intimate, emotive songs are the perfect vehicle for his scything wit and likeably broad Lancashire vox. Whether he can get close enough to lob some grenades at the corporate wrong-doers is debatable but if nothing else his songs are shaped like voodoo dolls we can all enjoy drunkenly sticking pins in. Just the ticket for relieving the increased stress most of us endure in this life.
Probe Plus Records online
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