A new name from Wolverhampton (though currently at university in Surrey), taking inspiration from Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Lewis Capaldi, Parker’s debut album, A Beautiful Place To Die, part recorded at Abbey Road and variously featuring Gabriel Mumbray on guitars, drummer Archie Gouldsborough and bassists Rick Hampton and Elliott Norman, reveals an impressive propensity for introspective folk-pop storytelling, wrapped up in simple melodic tunes and delivered with a voice that can either softly caress or soar.
It opens with the disarmingly lovely ‘Home’, sparse guitar notes carrying a simple love song about how “It’s not the house that makes the home, it’s the memories you put in it”. lovingly decorated with such images as a “Broken bed frame, a year old coffee stain/A bag of the clothes I forgot to return/Books on the language you forgot to learn/Family photos, dust on the frames cos I never clean them/One on the floor because I forgot to ask you to put it up”. It spans from the bustle of family (“Children’s drawings, crayon on white walls/They’re hugging the sloth that you got me for Valentine’s/Ruining the carpet we already vacuumed twice”) to nostalgic thoughts of becoming empty nesters (“And one day it’ll be just us again, we’ll miss the mess the busy weekends/Back to two teenagers just moving in, we’ll reminisce on what a life it’s been”).
In contrast, the mutedly fingerpicked ‘Oasis’ paints a picture of loneliness and despair (“Is there even anybody there to hear me cry/Cos it’s getting hard to breathe over here/It’s getting hard to see clearly anymore …Why do I feel so broken/I feel so hopeless like paper in the wind”) and the need for a calm refuge. But then the lyrical and musical mood changes to defiance and resilience with the bluesily slurred rhythmically itchy ‘Red Ink’ (“here I stand on my own two feet/No more little miss me anymore/So say, say you were wrong when you thought you knew me/Wrong to underestimate me”), of putting a bad relationship behind her (“How did you think this was going to end/No more happily ever afters/So thank god you’ve gone/Cos now I can carry on/Picking up the pieces you left behind”), investing in the power of songwriting to provide catharsis (“I’m writing this song in red ink/Signing your name all over it”).
Heralded by birdsong, mortality makes its appearance with the title track (“Did you see her, did you hear her laugh/Did you know her life while it last”), barely there guitar backdropping a waltzlike melody, the line “They said at least it was a beautiful place to die” a bittersweet mix of emotions. On a connected note, ageing is the prompt for the folksy circling guitar pattern ‘Grow Old’ with its attendant fears of being forgotten (“Please remember me someday/But if I go will you say I won’t fall”) and of losing the ability to look after yourself (“just wanna know/Should I stay/Will you take my hand and guide the way/Cos it’s getting hard, it’s getting cold/It’s getting where I’m out of control/And it’s getting rough, I’m getting weak”).
Rather more upbeat, piano ballad ‘I Do’ is a prospective bride’s romantic wedding day reverie (“I’ve pictured the scene, strange as it seems/I’ve known I’d be walking to you/In a white dress I’ve picked out/From a folder I’ve had since I was young/The music will play, the guests will all say/How wonderful this moment will be … For our first dance/I want a song that explains this romance perfectly/Cos I can’t wrap my head around the thought that you want me for life/So write me a song tonight/I want a melody that explains what you mean to me”).
The emotional see-saw returns, however, with ‘Forever Doesn’t Last Long’ where things again are falling apart (“Is it time I just draw the line…Cos you said my place was by your side/Now we can’t even look in each other’s eyes/Cos forever doesn’t last long when your young…It doesn’t take long to find the snake in the grass/To think i gave my trust to you, to think I gave my all to you/To think I thought it might last forever”).
And then it’s all buoyant again for the catchy, drums bolstered pop strum that is the vocally multi-tracked ‘London’ (“It’s getting late now but I don’t mind/The city lights lit up the sky/And I know a place where we could go/Kiss me on the streets of London/Pull me close, so close and promise/Your heart is mine/Your eyes are all I need/Oh and hold me on the last train home”) where she sound like a less strident Amy Macdonald. There’s even a whoah yelp at the end.
It doesn’t last, of course, as she’s joined by Boy Blue (aka Harry Rapinett who co-wrote and played guitar), their voices initially interleaving a capella for ‘Rose On The Grave’ and a familiar folk theme of lovers mourning (“See this rose growing from the ground I lay/See its thorns (see its thorns) sharp enough to kill…Hear this song calling from the ground I lay/Hear these words (hear these words)/Words we used to say”).
There’s more dysfunctional relationship musing with the melancholic piano-backed ‘Second Hand Smoke’ (“I got second hand smoke trying to put out a fire/I got second hand smoke trying to salvage a liar/Cos you just wanted me to hate you/And you hate the fact I can’t/How dare you twist the truth when it was all just circumstance/Under the sweetest dissolution, hypocritical romance/I am fighting my subconscious to give you another chance”).
Given the nature of many of the lyrics, the totally solo, penultimate circlingly fingerpicked fight or flight ‘Overthinking’ may be well-titled in its folksiness (“Cos my mind makes up stories that I believe, I believe/And my heart and my head racing and my chest caving in/Maybe I should just give in, I should let you in”).
It ends, Parker joined by a chorus of backing singers, co-producer and label owner Holly Beadell among them, with the propulsively strummed ‘Like An Irish Folk Song’, a sing and swayalong love song that, rhyming “the old County Down” with “a song bout a dirty old town” surely draws on the spirit of Shane and Kirsty as it carouses its way through the chorus of “I wanna love like the Irish and sing like the waves/Drink like the English on a warm summer’s day/Tell stories of love and of heartbreak and war/Sing a beautiful melody over these simple chords/I wanna love my English rose like an Irish folk song”), essentially returning to where the album began in the lines “As the years echoed on we moved back to my home/An old English town on an old English moor/With a ring on my finger we’ll sing once again/Bout a rattlin bog let this night never end …With a babe in my arms and another on the way/I’ll sing lullabies about traditions we made/I’ll sing Irish songs under English stars/You’ll keep this rose and its thorns in your heart”, as it closes on peals of laughter.
A Beautiful Place To Die may well be the birth of a new star.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.lucyparkerofficial.com
‘A Beautiful Place To Die’:
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