The Bishop of Ramsbury returns in his musical persona, as ever accompanied by David Perry on guitars and church organ, percussionist Louis Spanton and Cameron Saint on double bass, for his third album, Blank Arcades, the follow up to last year’s highly impressive Collidion and again recorded in a single day, this time in Yatesbury Church near to the Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire.
The album titled for the gothic arches ion the north porch of Salisbury Cathedral, essentially openings to nowhere , a brief a capella ‘Opening’ preludes the steady drum roll and ringing guitars of the raspingly sung ‘Place Of Dragons’, a commentary on social unrest (“Thou hast smitten me into a place of dragons: the Transit pulls up and out they all pour/My family home, not safe anymore… You offered support and so here I am: a brick in my chest and a bat in my van”) with a trad folk weave.
Titled for the Oregon city, with its strummed chiming guitar cascades and echoes of 6os psych folk ‘Fall In Eugene’ is about what it says, an autumnal image of the variegated season when “maple leaves are shrouded, and the boughs are lit with fire”, that manages to slip in a mention of Ethan Cohen, whose ‘Fargo’ was of course set there. Taken at a slower pace with strummed guitar and his distinctive sanded vocals ‘Pilot Light’ again mentions autumn and is about keeping the flame and inspiration alight (“struggling to set the clock, or unblock the jets that fire me”), while, drawing on biblical imagery, ‘O Lazarus’ (which contrives to rhyme with “dazzle us”) continues down the thematic path of impeded progress and rising above the obstacles (“In a show home garden with a tarmac shroud, saw you reviving flowers/From a windowsill of condolence cards and a smile that seemed like ours/Don’t come out, till the whole world can see you, don’t come out, ‘cos the stone’s not rolling back”).
Vocal doubletracked, the fingerpicked ‘All Of A Piece’ again has a melody built on descending scales with lyrics that are as much about personal as political confidence tricks (“The warm embrace has a plan behind it, each supply a demand, too blind for creamy walls now red as cochineal/I have to concede that/You will leave the right impression/each concession costed out”) where whether “a curse or a kiss: desire or disease, it’s all of a piece”.
The more brightly strummed ‘The Fastest In The Slow Lane’, where previous Roy Harper echoes sound once more, uses swimming as its wittily metaphorical diving board for a song about underachieving (“The fastest in the slow lane/The first one on the last train, alighting late again”) but knowing that the tortoise will outpace the hare (“Don’t you know that I’m the victor in the long game, licked until the final frame…and if you doubt, I have medals to my name, with citations which state how my triumphs are famously small”). I’d be surprised if he hadn’t used this in a sermon.
Alluding to the Oxford thoroughfare in Jericho, an inner suburb of Oxford, ‘Juxon Street’ opens with what also sounds a theme from a sermon “(Much is expected of all those to whom much has been given yet live on the moon”), another introspective musing (“I’ve prayed in repeat gloria patri, along Juxon Street/Artfully hiding a man incomplete”), and, keeping things place-located, the 55-second title track has him in awe of the aforementioned Cathedral.
Narrative focus shifts with the slow walking strum of ‘Darleen’ is a love song of sorts addressed to a woman who “says there’s nothing like morning after everything, then heads into the gym: a bottle and a phone”, our narrator admiring but cast in the technologically-cast shadow of another (“His soul a solid state, the integrated circuit gone”) who presumably also works out at the run down gym (“A combination lock will let her in a six o’clock, the place is quiet, there’s a chart of personal bests/They’re Polyfilla-ing the gaps to keep from crumbling”) as he pleads “won’t you find time for me, Darleen?”.
A different object of affection is the subject of ‘Shirley Windmill’, the Grade II listed tower mill in Shirley, in the London Borough of Croydon, a song that drops in product placement for ventilation manufacturer Vent-Axia, their fans installed in Bovis homes, the song a comment on how the march of progress has no time for past relics (“some restless night you might imagine how Shirley Windmill shuddered into life and spun upon the breeze…Free your sails and say you’ll still remember me”).
Continuing on the album’s tour of notable structures and buildings, another Grade II building lies within personal favourite ‘We Are The Sons Of Temperance’, named after an organisation founded in New York in 1842 to promote abstinence from alcohol, the lyrics mentioning 176 Blackfriars Road, their former London office (“the boardroom, stern and permanent, silhouettes Gestetner grey/With our style mosaic’d on the path, into the windows stained”), with the narrator lamenting them being turned out (“swept aside like supper scraps and gone within the week”) as the song becomes another musing on the inexorable march of time (“At the residential care home, each one clings to what she has/In the car park, every vehicle a silver Honda Jazz./As the amber cup is handed round, we must suck it to the dregs/For we are the Sons of Temperance in this world and the next”).
The scene shifts to Cornwall for ‘Trebarwith Strand’, Rumsey watching a man and his dog on the beach, the song about erosion and encroachment (“Some will abandon all they planned to watch the tide pull back the land”), the beach clearly taking on a symbolic meaning too.
Titled after a flat-topped hat that is traditionally worn by senior clerics (here I assume referring to himself), ‘Chapeau’ is another travels vignette about momentum on hold (“A grab truck went and shed its load on the A303/Tailback stretching for a mile, least as far as I see/So, I’m likely a little delayed for the vital appointment we made”) and holdups (“something more came up under matters arising/There were questions I couldn’t evade, so I’m running behind, I’m afraid”).
Then another traffic incident adds further delays (“A coach got stuck on the bend at Collingbourne Ducis/Just my luck, so I’m sat wondering what the use is/Now there’s a combine in front of a van…start without me, I’ll come when I can”), by which time you should get the general thrust of the allegory.
Another highlight, sung with just organ drone accompaniment and with Celtic, country and hymnal flavours, ‘The Stations Of Your Heart’ transfers religious terminology to matters of romance in time of estrangement (“ I confess your preciousness to me, and how you bless the man I plan to be/But why I’m stranded here remains a mystery, and I wait upon the stations of your heart…A raindrop spatters on the platform from above me, as if it matters that you lost your will to love me”).
It ends with the slow walking, slow breathing rhythm and percussive tones of ‘Quince Tree’, its association with love, fertility and marriage upended here (“hold me, fruitless bough: since she told me, I’m heavy now)”, the final sound being aptly that of a door closing.
Given it’s the third part of a triptych, whether there’ll be future musical ventures remains to be seen, but individually and collectively his is a congregation worth attending.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.andrewrumseymusic.bandcamp.com/album/blank-arcades
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