Solid Air
by John Martyn

Being aware of John Martyn, but not vastly familiar with his work, this was an intriguing album to review. I know that he was a friend and contemporary on the folk scene with Nick Drake, and also had interest in sonic experimentation, particularly with the use of delay. He even worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry, later in his career. First impressions of this record were pretty strong. The clarity of the guitar work sent against the slightly more woody bass work fantastically in tandem and, while I wasn’t necessarily completely sold on the vocal style at first, I did warm to it fairly quickly. There’s an indistinct, but melodically aware lilt to the delivery and the dynamic he uses to drift between slurred and slightly more precise pronunciation works well as a narrative device within a song. As the album progressed, things progressed into a much broader range of styles and tones than I was expecting, from a brighter, more blues-folk effort like Over The Hill to the darker sonic experimentation of I’d Rather Be The Devil. He touches on aspects of soul, jazz and even funk in various places across the record, with a strong approach to rhythm and some absolutely killer grooves scattered throughout. While there is typically a somewhat freeform edge to the structure of a lot of these songs, the melodic centrepieces to a lot of the songs are actually very strong, and while there is a lot of roaming and dancing around, it pretty much always felt like there was a central melodic point around which the rest of the work danced. Martyn also uses his voice in a really interesting way, happy to work with grit and an almost drunken slur in places, but working with much more precise diction and tonality in others, working to give each song and section what it needs while developing an interesting directionality to the performances. There’s some fantastic instrumental performances on here too, from the acoustic bass work of Danny Thompson to the gorgeous sax work of Tony Coe on Dreams By The Sea and some lush pieces of electric piano from John "Rabbit" Bundrick. It rarely feels overdone, and the guest instrumentalists are sparingly used, which if anything makes them all the more effective when they do appear. I do feel like the through line of the album itself is a tiny bit jumbled, due to the amount of styles that Martyn touches on, and he could have actually spent a bit more time weaving the record into a slightly longer but more coherent selection, but other than that, this was a great listen, and has the feel of a record that might grow on me even more over time.