Tag: Bjorn McAteer Dahlberg

Jason McNiff’s tenth album, Ten Blue Songs, was released this week and reflects a life well lived in the world of songs and live music. Dues have been paid, the songwriter’s craft has been learned, the signs of a veteran performer are to be heard from the first chord of the album…

… Literally the first chord of the album. ‘Morning’s Come’ opens Ten Blue Songs with a one-off melancholic strum which grabs the attention even before the melody builds and the lyrics tell the tale, a complex reflection of morning thoughts which have been stirred by musing on a photograph of (I assume) a past lover, whose initial dislike changed:

“Soon you’d discover you had feelings / and they ran deeper.
Some might say / that I used you
For your loving / and your shelter.
I’d say sure / but there’s no more, no more, no more,
No more time … no more time”

The arrangement builds from the initial chord to concluding meditative angelic backing vocals.

I suggested dues had been paid. As the album title suggests, there are a further nine songs, lyrically interesting and delivered with equally confident eloquence in both playing and arranging. McNiff was born in Bradford in the mid-seventies, moved to London in 1995 determined to be a musician, copied Knopfler’s guitar style, played the blues circuit, jammed and learned from older players.

He moved to Hastings in 2019 and runs sessions with a devotion that can only be admired, by all accounts missing very few. As he puts it, “I always loved how Woody Allen would play his clarinet every Monday night for 50 years, missing the Oscars, but never missing a show. Now, I have three well-attended nights a week in Hastings and I never miss a show. …. I still doubt myself every night, but maybe that’s what keeps us reaching.”

‘Night Shift Blues’ tells of a married couple who overlap only a little – she works days and he works nights. We hear the first of the innovative clarinet on the album on this blues-titled song; lyrically we continue to be hit with deeper lines, such as, “Through the streets I plod / Wondering what I would say to God” as he goes to work on his night shift and wonders about the men his wife is going to meet.

‘Lost My Way’ bears close listening as the lyrics are more complex than the easy chorus suggests, including the precision of imagery such as “So now in Poland / With a stick that I cut from a hazel tree / I walk through the village / watch the smoke blow away like flattery” as the singer works through his emotions.

‘Whoever I Am’ is McNiff writing like the stripped-back style he admires of Carver or Hemingway, “I love how writers like Carver can create emotions while only presenting the facts”; it’s also very catchy and upbeat with some lovely picking. ‘My Dreams Are Coming Home’ personifies dreams – his dreams have written to him to say they are on their way, he’s going to clean the car and kill the fattened calf for them (his dreams), so they can return, tell him about their mom and generally be prodigal dreams. The tune has a nod to Anji, Richard Moore’s violin provides equally fascinating interplay with McNiff’s guitar.

‘Folsom Prison Blues’ is the Johnny Cash song, but played with a stunning originality that made me hear the track anew and feel the emotions of the man in his prison cell in a way that I probably never have. McNiff’s intonation and the clarinet of Bjorn McAteer Dahlberg give the song a freshness that – literally – has to be heard.

McNiff describes ‘Scared To Love’ as the emotional centre of the album. “It made me uncomfortable to sing that line, to admit that feeling. I almost threw the song away. But I knew that discomfort meant there was something in it.” It’s a belter.

‘One Last Goodbye’ bounces along on a tale of driving back from a seaside day, “I know where we’re going” is a line which is emotional as much as geographic and, as you might expect by now, the song reflects on where roads lead, including the startling “There [i.e. in that place] lives a woman who knows my shame”. The song has a simple arrangement of guitar and vocal … and lyric.

‘Gatling Gun’ is, amongst other things, a reflection on his songs and how they might survive his death. ‘3pm Home Alone’ closes the album, lonely, ‘the signal is down all over town’.

The album was produced by Trever Moss, began live in the studio and then had clarinet, violin, bass and piano woven around these beginnings. McNiff describes the creation of the album thus, “I’ve been friends with Trevor for about 20 years, but this is the first time I’ve let him produce me. It was brilliant not to have to pussyfoot around or be necessarily too polite in the studio. He was quite comfortable saying that’s crap, do it again. That is actually invaluable”.

Many components contribute to the making of good art; Ten Blue Songs has many of these components aligned; it’s a splendid album.

Mike Wistow

Artist’s website: https://www.jasonmcniff.com

‘Scared To Love’ – officially live: