PAUL ARMFIELD Found (PSA Records)

PAUL ARMFIELD Found (PSA Records)Born in Birmingham and now based in the Isle of Wight, singer-songwriter Armfield’s sixth album is a collection of 15 songs inspired by photographs found over the years by his friend, Elinor, in the flea-markets of Berlin.

Held in high regard by Guy Garvey and Chris Difford, Armfield’s a workmanlike craftsman and storyteller in the manner of McTell, Scott Walker and Harvey Andrews, his voice smoky and warm, his delivery relaxed, his guitar playing deft but unshowy and his heart on his sleeve.

Opening with ‘Elinor’s Eyes’, a finger-picked acoustic nod to the album’s inspiration, it first shifts into up-tempo jazzy mode with the double-bass driven ‘Of Sky And Sea And Sand’ and then to the swirling strings, harp, brass and woodwind arrangement of ‘The Dubious Trinity’ which, inspired by a snap of three women on the parapet of a church, makes reference to Cohen’s ‘Sisters of Mercy’.

Like Walker, Armfield has been a Jacques Brel interpreter, and you can hear the influence on the likes of the gossamer ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Wind-Up Gramophone’, while, elsewhere, the two-minute, woodwind-streaked ‘The Secateur Sisters’ conjures the serious side of Jake Thakray and ‘Reflected In My Heart’ is a yearning, Gaelic-tinted piano and military drum beat slow march.

As they say, every picture tells a story, and, one of three tracks featuring Karen Tweed on accordion, ‘Round The Tree’, a rousing, brass-burnished Christmas family and friends gathering song, offers a striking contrast to the poignant, sadness-soaked melancholy of ‘Beneath The War Memorial’, while, with flamenco-coloured guitar melody and mournful violin, ‘The Boy In The Picture’ muses on the fate of a child taken in 1942. Snapshots of time, there is no record of who the people in the photographs were, but, through Armfield’s songs and imagination, they have been given life anew.

The Found photos are being exhibited at Dimbola Lodge, the former Isle of Wight home of pioneering Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, until the end of the year and at the Spring Arts Centre in Havant until the end of November, while the album is being released in a limited signed and numbered edition of 1000, in a matt black box containing the CD and 16 postcards featuring the photographs and the lyrics.

Mike Davies

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

Found – the preview: