The Good And The Bad Of It is Paul’s first studio album since 2019, following on from sparse lockdown EP Aardvark, the warm-voiced self-styled Rutland troubadour takes the same limited band approach as Songs For Anyone, this time with Trevor Moss behind the desk as well as contributing bass, mandolin, banjo and harmonica with Thure Johansen on electric guitar and resonator, violinist Henry Bristow and Moss’s wife Hannah-Lou on vocals.
With a couple of stylistic variations, folksy Americana’s the default on songs that mostly deal with love and loss, opening with the reflective banjo-tinted ‘I’m Not Lost (I Just Don’t Know Where I’m Going)’ about picking up the pieces again (“Well It’s been 7 long years since I was here…now I’m returning and I’m counting all my days from now on”) with its feelings of never having made a mark (“I’ve spent my life working on a painting/That will feature in the background of a photo of somebody else’s life”) and trying to stay positive (“always looking for the shit through the shine every time”) as he asks “can I trust my eyes to see what’s really there?/Can I trust my heart to know when not to care” and questions the purpose (“If you can’t start as you mean to go on/Then please won’t you finish as you meant to have begun”).
A similar theme informs the strummed, violin-swathed “Find The Time” which, with its carpe diem note (“time is the thing we’ll blame it all on when we’re through”) asks “are you finding time for ice-cream at a bus stop in the rain?/Are you finding time for journeys just to come right back again?/Are you finding time for sitting longer than you know you should?/Are you finding time for all of the above?” with the album’s recurring image of sharing a life (“Find the time for me and I’ll find time for you…I want to watch the sun go down just to watch it come back up with you/Then I’ll fall asleep in your arms like lovers do”).
With more of a bluesy judder to the rhythm, the title track continues down the same path (“Live from the helm don’t let it get away”), making its message clear in the lines “I knew a girl once she was every barfly’s dream/Most of the time she’d even buy her own drinks/She found a way to swap living for existing/Where’s the sense in life without love?”, nodding to Ian Dury with “what is life without reasons to be cheerful?” and about making the most of the here and now when, referencing Hamlet, the future’s never certain (“Where’s the sense in being if not to be?/Take it on, don’t let it slide right by you/You can be just what you want to be/When I saw you last, searching for the rainbows ending/You had the sunshine in your eyes/Now the storm is raging there’s no chance to get the deckchairs gathered in”),
Choppy guitar jabs drive ‘First Thoughts Of The Day’, which, cautioning “I think it’s better that we don’t share what we dream”) sketches a relationship founded perhaps more on mutual need than mutual love (“You know I’ll love you later if you kiss me now”) , but ends with the wisdom that while “Some live for others, some only for themselves/Two lives together are more than twice a life alone”.
Accompanied by a slow chugging resonator guitar, aching country ballad ‘Your Kisses’ returns to the seize the moment theme advising “if you’re one of the fortunate kind/You’ll find someone in who’s faithful heart they will reside/It’s never the one you wished you’d met/Always the one you can’t forget/So before you go, tell them so”.
Echoing the sentiment, barrooms and romance come together with banjo and violin and Hannah’s refrain vocals on the playful swaying “Maybe Now, Maybe Then” (“If I’d know that our first dance was to be the last chance I got/I’d have chosen a longer song, Freebird extended version”) about how lightning doesn’t strike twice (“I’m like the man at the theme park waiting with the bags/Next time I come I’m going to go on all the rides/But there is no next time in life/What’s past is gone and don’t come back”), though you can’t help feel he’s contriving the lyrics into shape as he sings “I’ve got a stone in my shoe from the hole in my heel its scratches my toes when I walk/But I don’t feel the pain, It’s not so bad when I walk beside her”.
Written from a songwriter’s perspective, the bouncily strummed uptempo ‘I’m The Man Who Fell In Love With You’ is about turning what you sing into what you live (“I once was the man who wrote songs that he believed in/Songs about love and about the girls who leave him/Then one day I saw your face …Now I’m the man who sings the songs about the man who fell in love with you”), offering the astute observation that “You can fail at what you don’t want/So you might just take a chance with someone that you do”.
Again riding a circling bluesy guitar riff, ‘Across The Water’ with its undercurrent of death has the feel of a spiritual (“I’m gonna journey across the water/I’m gonna leave my family and go alone… I can’t keep my eyes from closing/It goes to show, all those numbers do add up/I don’t know what else I can tell you/It’s something I gotta do alone/Staring sweat sodden sober/Into the cold light of day/I can see my shadow turning/And slowly walking away”), the mood and sound taking a contrasting turn for the strummed talking blues ‘U Do U’ with its be who you are message (“Try to forget about all this ‘best life’ shit/You do you”) as, Jesse and Daphne Deeble on backing vocals and daughter Flossie on giggles, he declares “I measure my success in smiles/It’s the currency I’ve been using for a while… you’re either one of the losers or you don’t agree to take part…Give away a smile a day for free/Take care of someone who took care of you” because “There’s no best version, no best life/No-one is better at being you than you…It’s not a competition don’t believe all the hype/Just try to allow yourself to enjoy being along for the ride”.
Which aptly enough leads to the waltzing Kristoffersonish (there’s a line about making it through the night) album closer, ‘Take Me As I Am’ which returns to the opening sentiments (“After changes I am more or less the same/Though in truth I guess, I can’t say I know where I am”) but, while there’s “no declarations just notes of apologies/For all the things I know I’ve done wrong”, there’s support, comfort and direction in the love of the woman who “each night as I take the stage…sits somewhere near but always just out of sight” and makes him “aware of where I am”.
A journeyman in the finest troubadour tradition, he may not be a household name or a folk charts staple, but McClure knows where he is, and you should make a point of being there too.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.paulmcclure.bandcamp.com
‘U Do U’ – live:
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