Days Like These is released to mark the duo’s 30 year partnership, the UK’s longest serving female duo. Not bad going for what was originally conceived as a one-off project as The Women of Albion. Joined by While’s daughter Kellie on harmonies, bassist Miranda Sykes, banjo maestro Dan Walsh, Tom Chapman on cajon, udo (a terracotta African drum) and percussion and electric guitar courtesy Johnny Hayes, as usual the credits are shared between them , except that is for one co-write, the, banjo accompanied Appalachian bluesy album opener ‘Kalamazoo’.
The name may well be familiar from the Glen Miller number ‘I’ve Got A Girl In Kalamazoo’, but those who know their music history will be aware that the Michigan city was, in 1917, the site of the factory that launched Gibson guitars. What’s much less know is the story of the over 200 women who, from 1942-1945, made the iconic ‘banner guitars’ alongside turning out bullets as the factory’s munitions work. When the war ended and the men returned, they resumed their old jobs with the women and their input fading into obscurity, Gibson even denying their very existence. Until, that is, coming across a 1941 photograph of 70 or so of them, John Thomas wrote a book, immortalising them as the Kalamazoo Gals, which, in turn, inspired the song which relates their story and, in the line “why would you hide what women can do” touches on the all too common way women’s contributions are erased from history.
The first of the alternating writing credits is Julie’s gentle bittersweet fingerpicked ‘I Will Carry You’, the first of two about her late father, Jim, to whom the album’s dedicated, as she sings “when I became the orphaned one/My whole world tilted from the sun…and when I walk now/There are no familiar footsteps in the sand”, a reminder that while “we are all orphans in the end…immortality is found/In the love that’s handed down/And we can take it and pass it on to others”.
Also with banjo, Chris’s first also has a personal connection, the rhythm rippling ‘Trusted, Mistrusted’ being about a postmistress friend falsely accused as part of the Post Office scandal with its now exposed familiar cover-up (“they told her she was the only one”) who lost everything and moved to Spain to try and start over before returning when the lies were brought to light to become part of the campaign, “one of many hundreds/like her who’d been deceived”.
That’s followed by Julie’s second song for and about her father, the simply picked and strummed ‘King Of Sheds’ pretty much tells you all you need to know in the title a celebration of his belief that “If something’s not worth building right you’re better off not trying”, which seems a perfect principle to live your life by, the song ending with a swipe at soulless ‘progress’ in “one day they’ll knock it down and build a modern one instead/After all who wants a corrugated iron shed”.
Returning to Chris, initially accompanied by Appalachian dulcimer before expanding the sound with udu, the achingly warbled ‘Come To Me’ is framed as a song from a mother after losing her daughter to a cult for 20 years, gaslighted by its leader (“he kept you inside like a prisoner/promised you would be delivered, but that was just a lie”), the final verse ending with her return home “where you will heal and again be strong” and a pledge of forever support (“wherever life may take you…you know you can/Come to me”).
A retro lazy, easy rolling, choppy rhythm uplifting close harmony blues, Julie’s ‘Days Like These’ is another simple celebration, of those days when you feel everything’s right with you and the world (“you can’t bust my bubble on days like these”) and you just want to bottle it up, the closing backing vocals including the album’s musicians joined by Helen Watson, Bob Fox, Billy Mitchell, Clea Rawinski and Calliope Clarke.
I suspect Clarke is also the Callibobs to whom Julie’s dedicated the chiming tempo and refrain soaring ‘Like The Sun’ where she encourages “don’t take her wrong if she talks too loud she’s just enthusiastic” because “gold like the sun” she’ll “fight for a defend you/When you’re down on your knees”.
Things get introspective with ‘Lucky Today’, Julie’s strummed reflection on “my life and all the twists and turns/It’s taken me on”, the days when you get by on half a cup and those where you take it on the chin, the days when the blues seem they’ll never end and those when “not even precious love can make you see/That there is light in every day”. But even so, it’s love that still carries you through, as she ends “you roll in and gently push me/Until I have to say/I feel lucky today”.
Chris’s last contribution is the more traditional flavoured ‘Our Corner Of The World’ sung unaccompanied other than for a backing drone, and, watching a tree’s branches dancing in the wind from her upstairs window, rich in nature imagery and new day dawning, a song of thanks for “this life that I lead… for music and laughter and friendships of gold/And all they’ve allowed me to be.”
The three remaining tracks are all penned by Julie, the first the percussive and Eastern textured, itchy driving rhythms and wailing electric guitar of ‘Good Intentions’, an angry swipe at cancel culture where “innocent words can step onto land mines/Blow up your meaning/And blur those fine lines” and those who, setting themselves up as judge and jury to “rain down fire with fists of fury”, take what you say and “twist them/And turn them around/Darken your name and dress it in doubt”.
The only track to feature her on piano, sung with a quiet passion, ‘Blood Red Moon’, the album’s terrific standout, was inspired by Medgar Evers, the Black civil rights activist who was assassinated in his driveway in Jackson, Mississippi in June 1962, a story that continues to be repeated with many different victims as “the father’s dreams are strewn/And the mother’s arms are empty” as, the “meaning of mercy, freedom, hope and love” lying bleeding, she sings “will we ever learn?”
Dedicated to While, Days Like These ends with the slow walking dusty Americana of ‘30 Years Along’, a track that reinforces their comparison as the UK’s answer to the McGarrigles, a celebration and commemoration of the duo’s partnership from finding their chemistry on “that summer’s day in 1994 with a suitcase and a six string/Hoping that we might sing/Something beautiful together”, they’re still “two halves together” and “there’s magic still”. I can’t think of a better line to sum up the album.
Mike Davies
Artists’ website www.whileandmatthews.com
‘Kalamazoo’:
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