REG MEUROSS – Reg Meuross (Stockfisch SFR 357.40922)

Reg MeurossI don’t often get to review a Reg Meuross album, usually because someone else gets to them first but this time that someone else wrote the sleeve notes which rather disqualifies him. This pleases me greatly because Reg Meuross is quite probably the best album I’ve heard this year. There is back-story to go into first. Reg was invited to Northheim, Germany to record a retrospective album with new arrangements of favourite songs. The twist is that the favourites were selected by Stockfisch founder and producer, Günter Pauler.

The first selection is the heart-wrenching ‘Good With His Hands’ in which a man calls up boyhood memories of his carpenter father. The band supporting Reg is guitarist and flautist Ian Melrose, Lutz Möller on keyboards and bassist Antoine Pütz and elsewhere you’ll find harp, cello, saxophone and autoharp but even with all these contributions you really hear Reg and his guitar. Second is ‘The Man In Edward Hopper’s Bar’, the bar in question being the one depicted in Nighthawks which I’m sure you all know. The song is a musical interpretation of the painting as Reg imagines the lives and conversations of the people behind the glass.

Next comes the summary of the country’s woes that is ‘England Green & England Grey’ and I could happily stop there – three exquisite songs is a good return for most albums. Of course, if it had ended there I would have missed ‘One Way Ticket To Louise’, a deceptively simple song about a man leaving town on the night bus and ‘For Sophie (This Beautiful Day)’ about an anti-Nazi activist guillotined in 1943. And I wouldn’t have heard ‘And Jesus Wept’ telling the familiar story of a soldier executed for “cowardice” by firing squad in the Great War.

I’ve talked about half the album but I’m sure you get the idea. I could describe ‘The Band Played ‘Sweet Marie’’ and ‘Looking For Johnnie Ray’ and the others but I’d rather let you discover them for yourself and I urge you to do so because, as I said, this is one of the best albums of the year.

Dai Jeffries

Artist’s website: http://www.regmeuross.com/

‘And Jesus Wept’ – live:


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