Tag: Jonathan ‘JD’ Darley

Pivoting around the core membership of Jonathan ‘JD’ Darley, Andy Yates and Robbie Sattin, augmented here by eight others on the likes of flute, violin, trumpet and double bass, Ends Of The Earth is their latest voyage on the shanty seas, hauling a cargo of thirteen numbers that span subjects from booze to beasts.

Inspired by the mythological Greek story of King Minos and the Minotaur, the album kicks off with heavy bluesy folk rock stomper ‘Labyrinth Blues’ that reverses the exhortation from Isaiah 2:4 with its not so subtle call to political affirmative action “put down your plowshares and pick up your swords/We must slay the beast we must find the cause”.

It’s into familiar shanty musical and lyrical territory with ‘Over He Goes’, which, complete with a veritable yo ho ho of a chorus, has a pirate Captain resorting to blunt measures when acreman fails to measure up to basic maritime standards (“You’re way too pissed to trim the sails over he goes/Well toe the line or join the whales over he goes”).

Moving from brine to beer, dating from 1860, the robust refrain friendly, foot-stomping ‘Hey John Barleycorn’ is one of the many folk songs metaphorically celebrating the origins, brewing process and delights of nut-brown English ale, things staying in a drinking persuasion for the rousing romp that is ‘Jolly Roving Tar’, a cover of The Irish Rovers’ ode to ribald carousing, opportunistic lasses and faithless lads as opposed to the traditional song of the same name.

Taking a swerve into folklore and galloping yee haw country music, opening with a radio broadcast voiceover, ‘The Mothman’ relates to the North American cryptid (a creature such as the Sasquatch whose existence is anecdotal rather than evidential) first “spotted” in the 1960s and said to stalk the woods nearby Point Pleasant in West Virginia, the song written from the perspective of an explorer who sets out to find it with likely fatal results (“These country roads ain’t taking me back home/They’ve led me down a path that’s dark and wrong/If you’ve found my last recording/And you’re hell bent on exploring/Take heed my friends and listen to this song”).

From a day out laughing at the lunatics at the asylum to a spot of bear baiting, public entertainment has always had is macabre and grisly side, and one of the most popular spectacles in 16^th century London was turning out to watch a hanging. Taking its title from the nickname given to the day of execution where thousands would gather to watch, the death march rhythm swayalong ‘Paddington Fair’ aptly opens with spectral, spooky discordant piano notes, a doomy backing chorus adding to the effect as they sing “see the crowd swing and sway while you’re treading the air/Come down come down it’s your time to shine/For the crown will have justice at the end of the line”.

A thematic thread leads into the more wearied tones of the acoustic strummed Celtic-flavoured ‘Dying Of The Day’ which, written by Darley and producer Paul Worthington and given a festival swayalong treatment, takes the idea of travelling westward to extend the length of a day, as a metaphor for clinging onto life and trying to stretch out those last moments as long as possible (“As the cords of death surround me/Tangled limbs are earthly weighed/I would escape forever westward/To the dying of the day”).

The first of two clocking in under two minutes, ‘Bow Hauliers’ pays tribute to the poorly paid men (“cheaper than horses”) from small towns along the river Wye who would take the cargo off ships as the river got too shallow and haul them by hand on barges to be traded in towns further up river.

You can’t really have a shanty album with a whaling so, and doing duty here is the slow loping banjo-plucked ‘Scrimshaw’, the title referring to ivory adorned with carvings, a common activity for sailors aboard whaling ships to pass the time and, alluding to Moby Dick, presenting as a love song to whales and the superstitions that surround them in different cultures as well as evoking the sense of the loneliness and hardships of sailors aboard whaling ships in the 1700s and 1800s.

Likewise, transportation songs are pretty much a staple too and the urgent, drums rattling title track steps up to fill the slot with its account of those who were sent to Van Diemans land for crimes as small as stealing bread, the line “for under the red and white whip we did sail” a reference to the flag used to indicate a prisoner transport vessel, on which as many as 162,000 prisoners were sent to work in the new colony for seven years.

Sung unaccompanied save for a hollow drum beat, the second of the shorter tracks is ‘The Mallard’, titled for the world’s fastest steam locomotive, designed by Nigel Gresley and setting the record in 1938 at 126mph, the message behind it being to “rolling thunder shall not die/A lesson still in how to strive/For boldness and the gall to try”.

It’s back to the booze for the jovial Music Hall sway of ‘What Did I Do’ and I daresay a scenario familiar to many of waking up after a lengthy session at the pub and not having the faintest recollection of what happened (“It looks like somebody glued me to a chair/Twigs and thick bracken stuck into my hair/Five bags of lemons and a piece of a door/A dog by my side that I’ve not met before”) or how you ended up where you did, the album playing out with the drum-thumping, banjo driven carousing folk punk ‘Re-Retirement Song’ which upends the familiar narrative about a seasoned sailor unable to settle back on land. Here, after a life at sea, opting to put down roots and “be a man of the land…be a man of the trees…be a man wherever my woman will be”.

There’s no reinventing of the genre wheel, but they remain very steady hands at the capstan.

Mike Davies

Artists’ website: www.thelongestjohns.com

‘The Mothman’ – official video:

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