Review:'Mull Historical Society' 'In My Mind There's A Photograph'
- Label: 'Last Night From Glasgow'
- Genre: 'Indie'
- Release Date: '12.6.26.'
Our Rating:
In My Mind There's A Photograph is the latest album by Mull Historical Society, this time around Main man Colin MacIntyre invited 12 authors to write lyrics based on a photograph and then Colin set them all to music. I will list all the authors by their songs. The album was recorded on the Isle Of Mull by Gordon Maclean and features The London African Gospel Choir.
The album opens with Where Are The Heroes by Dan Richards, are there any left in these desperate times, this is urgent indie punk, telling a tale of his grandad working on the rails delivering mail back in the day for the Great Western Railway.
Once Upon A Tightrope by Colum McCann is more stripped back evocation of an act of derring do, Phillipe Pettit walking that Tightrope high up in the sky, set to the piano and shaker backing, building helping to make us all look up to those twin towers, where 3000 people lost their lives.
Cattle Bells by Alexander McCall Smith is a slight piano ballad for the sound of the Cattle Bells and how they affect your memories evoking moments in time, the backing singers' cries of I remember help centre this song and keep our focus on the north south divide this seems to be obsessed with.
Charing Cross Canyon by Louise Welsh is a more full on story, related by a cab driver for the mirages you see late at night, the old tricks post boxes play when you're tired, putting hands up to hail you, only they are back to the horse drawn day, but he is having those visions anyone who has driven a cab at night will be familiar with, like I certainly am, even if I've never heard anyone claim Charing Cross as a canyon.
Wish We'd Taen Mair by Len Pennie is a seemingly African influenced music, with very heavy Scots brogue vocals, for being forced to have a pic taken while not looking your best, moaning and complaining that you were forced into it.
Gaza On My Back by Jehan Bseiso who is the deputy director general of Medecins Sans Frontier whose sparse despairing description of events in Gaza, the horror and the devastation caused by the millennia long struggle over a small strip of land, the violins lament the horrors of children being shot for trying to find some food to eat.
We Called It A Lake by Yiyun Li is kind of reminiscent of Babble by Dagmar Krause and Kevin Coyne, although this isn't love gone wrong, these reflections are a little more distracted by dreams of how things might be overseas, in far off lands we never think we could visit.
Dopamine Eyes by Irvine Welsh has an almost gospel intro before it builds into more of an indie rocker for that rush at the start of a love affair, just how it gives you the jitters in the middle of the seduction.
Budapest by Irenosen Okojie is a slow piano elegy for sisters standing outside the magnificent parliament building on the banks of the Danube, while talking of seizures and the bridges between Buda and Pest, the traumas they are going through, this hits home to me, I went to Budapest while recovering from a broken shoulder for the treatments available in the towns many spas, I hope the sisters found the healing they were looking for.
Midnight Sun by Paul Lynch strolls towards that Midnight Sun across the building beat and strident piano, they have moved on to new horizon, while ready to sit waiting for you to return, even if in there hearts they know you might never come back.
The Soldier And The Waitress by Alan Johnson is a eulogy for his parents meeting in the aftermath of World War II, stealing hearts and healing the scars of war, can you ever get over what you've seen and done, will he ever stop the violence, leading to the injustice that he lived twice as long as his wife.
The album closes with Hillman Imp by Ali Smith about a car they had back in 1971, the year my parents bought a Hillman Minx, which connects me with this immediately, the choral aspects of this celebration of putting your foot down and driving through the highlands in it, for me it would be driving around the hills of Dorset, dad trying to teach mum to drive, rather than the highland dancing, this is a very touching epistle to long gone memories.
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