Is it just me, or are James Yorkston & The Athletes getting a raw deal from the music press? Although fairly well received, the new album “Just Beyond The River” just doesn’t seem to be setting the heather on fire. Which is surprising, considering it’s the best album this particular reviewer has heard all year.
What with the recent hullabaloo over the Scottish music scene (Franz Ferdinand, Sons & Daughters, B&S, etc) by the UK music press, you would think when an album of such beauty and intelligence landed on their desks they’d be falling over themselves. It must be the lack of mascara, James.
Make no mistake about it, this is music for grown-ups. Whereas the band’s last album, “Moving Up Country”, was a successful attempt at “…combining the elements of Can and Planxty”, this time around Yorkston and his Athletes take the sparse country sound of Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and marry it off with the folk sentiments of fellow countrymen Bert Jansch and John Martyn.
Produced by Keiran Hebden (Four Tet, Fridge) and recorded at the Bryn Derwen studio in deepest North Wales, this, their second release, is a dark, sparse affair but, crucially, the songs are just as beautiful. Traditional instruments such as the hammered dulcimer, banjo, bouzouki and accordion glide effortlessly through each song, complimenting Yorkston’s dreamy Scottish lilt perfectly.
The common theme lyrically throughout is, of course, love. Opening track “Heron” (for me, one of the best things the Athletes have ever done) is a lazy tale of missing the countryside, ending with the line: “I believe in you girl, and I want you”.
While “Hotel” (“I’m revelling in your words, as your voice it warms right through me”), ‘This Time Tomorrow’ (“I clasp my hands around your waist, ignoring the usual associate commotion of the touch”) and ‘Surf Song’ (“You asked me of my past, I told you all those truths I’d kept hidden inside”) all show Yorkston’s honest, intelligent songwriting, while, at the same time, never becoming sentimental or pretentious. A rare skill indeed.
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Of the 11 songs presented here, Yorkston has chosen to cover two traditional ballads. The first, “Edward”, is of ancient Scottish heritage, while folk luminaries such as Dick Gaughan and Annie Briggs have previously covered the album’s closer “The Snow Melts The Soonest”, which is the nearest they get to the Can/Planxty sound of "Moving Up Country".
Yorkston has that rare transcendental ability that all musicians strive for: to take the listener to a far off land. Yorkston’s land is a land where folk music is played by, well, folk. It’s a land of Fences but not of boundaries; it’s a land where the words ‘nu’ and ‘tronic’ are frowned upon; but most of all, it’s a land of soul-searching and heart-bearing honesty. And, if nothing else, these songs are full of honesty.
Coming from the musically fertile area of Fife’s East Neuk, Yorkston is a long time member of Scotland’s best-kept secret, The Fence Collective. Based in Anstruther, Fence is a collective of musicians, artists, craftsfolk, chancers and slackers (their words, not mine) playing the sweetest music you’ll find anywhere in Britain at the moment. Not least of all by James Yorkston & The Athletes.
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