WRAPPING UP 2012 with Richard James

Since the first solo album from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci co-founder Richard James in 2006, the excellent “The Seven Sleepers Den”, the interval between albums appears to have halved – “We Went Riding” in 2010 and then this year’s stripped-back “Pictures In The Morning”. However the latter was actually written in the summer of 2009 and then recorded in two houses in Cardiff with producer/engineer Iwan Morgan. “I record everything now in houses, using every area of the building. It makes it hard to do drum tracks live but you can do acoustic ones. The album is meant to be quite low key and intimate as it’s quite personal.”

However a delayed gap from writing to release date does not Mr James has been idle: not only does he curate the musical side of the Laugharne Weekend festival each April he has also established In Chapters as an umbrella for publishing and promoting a variety of musical and literary endeavours including the Pen Pastwn group he formed with Gareth ‘The Gentle Good’ Bonello and Laura J Martin.

Although a low-key and personal record, The Line Of Best Fit captured the spell that the nine track album weaves perfectly: ““Pictures in the Morning” is also an addition to one of the most overpopulated brackets in the song-writing tradition: the break-up album. Add this to the album’s blanket ban on loud look-at-me antics and its propensity for melancholy introspection, and you’d be excused for assuming we’re faced with a bona fide misery-fest. However, although regret and heartache run rife through the nine tracks, these are nevertheless tunes tailor-made for the bright, warily hopeful morning after the boozy self-pity of the night before has faded. There’s hurt aplenty here, but you can practically feel the sunshine radiating from the gentle, warm melodies that propel most of these tracks.”

So a busy year for Richard James?

What I will remember most about 2012 is...
A week long trip to Sudan with the British Council in February. I took the Pen Pastwn band out there to collaborate with local musicians, play 2 shows. We swam off a reef in the Red Sea, met some great people and musicians, and was an eye-opener to that part of the world and its music.

What should be forgotten about 2012...
I can't remember....

The best gig I played was...
Green Man Festival, with a 7 piece Pen Pastwn band. [The gig in May at The Castle in Manchester was quite special too]



The best gig I saw was...
Y Niwl, The Fountain Inn, Laugharne Weekend festival in April. They were meant to play at midnight, but had a gig in Birmingham the same evening, turned up at five past, and were on by quarter past. Super charged rock 'n' roll, great set.

A record from 2012 that will be still be played in 10 years time?
'Spin That Girl Around' by Euros Childs.

Overlooked in 2012?
Depends what you mean by overlooked. If a good artist has the chance to record and release their work, play live and get it across to people, then they aren't overlooked and the view of the media is irrelevant. The almost instantaneous word of mouth and directness to music fans the internet provides means the judgement of the media is increasingly irrelevant. Radio play I would say is the most important because of revenue, and provides a more well-known and well-trodden platform to hear the music.

And what can we look forward to in 2013 from Richard James?
Hopefully a couple of records, a few gigs, working on a couple of projects I hope will come off. Plenty in the pipeline!

Halving that release time again? This can only be a good thing. In exchange for your email address there’s a five track Pen Pastwn EP over at In Chapters. And the Richard James solo albums can be tricky to track down but here is a good starting point.

RICHARD JAMES @ THE CASTLE 2 May 2012

I last saw The Gentle Good as a five-piece band accompanied by a string quartet. Here Gareth Bonello, shorn of band, strings and even band name, was as sumptuously captivating as at Green Man Festival - even if the back room at The Castle Hotel is not as breathtaking as the Brecon Beacons. His six song solo set featured English and Welsh language songs, all softly sung, about lovers at dawn, burnt bridges and seafaring birds. The latter was from a forthcoming album based on the works of a Chinese poet and sung in Welsh. It may sound esoteric or specialist but it was utterly entrancing and instantly accessible. Bonello apologised for the length of time preparing for second song ‘Pamela’ but it featured an unusual tuning discovered when he dropped his guitar. A neat metaphor for the set – meticulous but spontaneous and filled with fresh discovery. Surprised to be saying it but I think I prefered these delicate songs without those string players tonight.


Richard James's recorded output may not be as erratic as fellow ex-Gorky Euros Childs but I have seen live performances of his that have veered from introspective folky intimacy to screeching rock melt-down. Tonight's gig followed the template of this month's album release however: quiet, exquisite finger-picked folk-blues, even opening and closing with first and last songs of that record ‘Pictures In The Morning’.



In this small room, the pain and the heart-break contained within them was starkly exposed but in a sweet confection of harmonies and gently interwoven guitars. The trio of performers, (Gareth Bonello returning on guitar and Andy Fung on hand drum) also gave us Welsh murder ballads ("everyone dies"), songs from the Pen Pastwn collaboration and hypnotic, almost Eastern, metronomic rhythms. For performers who already played a Marc Riley 6Music session and then got lost trying to find tonight’s venue, they were remarkably focused and assured. An evening of special intimacy and rare music-making that was a joy to witness.



The Set List:

All Gone
Baby Blue
Say It Ain't No Lie
Sun Instrumental
Shot My Baby Down
Familiar Roads
Cariad Y Wawr
Down To My Heart
Shake My Heart
Sinners And Movers
Wrth Y Llongau
Yes My Love Died

RICHARD JAMES Pictures In The Morning

Raring-to-go albums throw back the covers energetically and leap out of bed with a full-throated holler to greet the day. Richard James’s third album ‘Pictures In The Morning’ softly starts a gentle, understated song of thanksgiving for lying in bed and hearing your loved ones’ heartbeat. However this intimate moment in ‘All Gone’ is a future, longed for event; the song is actually about the pangs of absence. In a similar way, most of the album conjures exquisite and fragile acoustic folk-blues to explore homecomings, pain, loss and hope. James’s tender vocals are placid, almost carefree but sing simply of deep, swirling emotions.


It’s an album with a fair old cast list – H Hawkline, Gareth Bonello and Euros Childs amongst the seven musicians contributing drums (one song only), electric guitar, bass, cello, viola and harmony vocals - yet so hushed and softly-spoken it feels like a solo album. The majority of these gracefully unfurling tracks are just voice and finger-picked guitar and when the other instruments appear they are subtly and unobtrusively woven in. If any one instrument stands out it is the viola - lonesome and mournful on 'Baby Blue', elegant and, well mournful again, on 'Do You Know The Way To My Heart'.

The two obvious deviations from this pattern divide the album into thirds. ‘Sun Ease Pain’ is a 10 minute, multi-part song appearing third out of nine tracks. Opening and closing sections retain the delicacy and sonic clarity of the quieter numbers but surge to a flurried psyche-folk intensity with livid, dense layers of cello and viola. These bookend a mid-section of reflective acoustic guitar and astral harmonies. It never becomes nightmarish but it is a marked contrast to the lullaby softness elsewhere. And then signalling the final third of the album, ‘Magical Day’, the full band song with drums, is a nifty swagger of a (folk-)rocker with squally guitar and coolly drawling vocals about bouncing back after heartbreak "Now when it's healed the heart is strong / we drink fine wine and get along / seek new love to heal the pain / we dive straight in."

With fewer fuzzy, sonic adventures than 2006’s ‘The Seven Sleepers Den’ and lacking the up-beat full band expansiveness of 2010’s ‘We Went Riding’, this new record could be seen as a retreat. But that is to underestimate its quiet, intimate powers. ‘Pictures In The Morning’ is not a dark-night-of-the-soul record but one where the melancholy is gorgeously bathed in bright Spring sunshine. Sheer class.

Hear songs from this record live this week when Richard James plays Chester and Manchester.



Richard James Pictures In The Morning [BUY]