When an album pops through your letterbox and drops onto your doormat, with a sleeve that credits well established musicians like Rabbit Bundrick (Keyboards) and BJ Cole (Pedal Steel) as well as from the younger end of the spectrum, Jackie Oates (Fiddle), then you drop everything, stick the headphones on, pop your stocking feet on the worktop, make a brew and close your eyes for an hour or so.
Multi-instrumentalist Reg Meuross is an exceptionally graceful singer and a fine song writer with an ear for good arrangements and fine musicianship, hence the folks he knocks about with. The title track "Dragonfly", which comes in fourth on the track list after settling the listener in with three fine songs, is probably one of the most instantly accessible pop songs I've come across in ages. It's got that steadily building power chord structure that eventually erupts into the single word chorus of 'Dragonfly' - I defy anyone not to sing along.
In just three short verses, "Fools Gold" opens up a world of mystery and intrigue, which is impossible to avoid engaging with. Poetic story songs that unfold with such ease are such a rare thing these days, unless your name happens to be Richard Thompson.
"The Sound of Hallelujah's" addresses the common argument we all have with our offspring these days; whose version of "Hallelujah" is better, Cohen's or Buckley's? It's a good job that neither of the John Cale or Rufus Wainwright versions were brought into the discussion. Whilst Meuross agreed to disagree with his daughter Lily's assertion that the Buckley sprog's version is the definitive one, I'm going to be neutral and claim that both versions do it for me equally.
The gorgeous "Lizzie Loved A Highwayman" is a ballad to die for. Based on the Dick Turpin legend, the song weaves through verse after verse of fine story telling set to a Jackie Oates' wistful violin backdrop. If Reg Meuross isn't invited along to the Transatlantic Sessions mansion for series 4 to sing at least this one song, then Ali Bain and Jerry Douglas can scrape and slide for their supper.
Songs about desertion have always been a staple for folk singers throughout the ages. "And Jesus Wept" is poignant in that it addresses the case of Harry Farr, the first soldier to receive a pardon by the British government in 2006, after being executed ninety years earlier by his own troops for desertion, even though he was known to be suffering from shell shock. Meuross handles the subject with some gracefully sympathetic song writing, noting that it's not just cowardice that we kill our soldiers for, but the notion that 'if a man's not fighting, he might as well be dead.' Try telling Hawkeye Pearce and Trapper John that!
'Dragonfly' isn't short of good songs. I can't find a duffer amongst them. The songs are all delicately performed by Meuross together with a tastefully assembled cast, who ensure these songs are given appropriately sensitive arrangements to allow them to breathe. I feel a certain empathy towards "William Brewster Dreams of America" as it relates to the parish of Scrooby, but twelve miles from my home, where this particular Pilgrim Father set out on his adventures in 1608. I'm still trying to get out of here! Maybe I'll hop on the back of the next dragonfly that passes through.
Once again joined by Roy Dodds and Rabbit Bundrick on drums and keyboards, with BBC2 Folk Awards Nominee Jackie Oates on fiddle, after three albums veined with personal experience, the Somerset troubadour's latest is predominantly built upon historically based story songs, many inspired by tales collected while touring the country. It is, though, an exception to the rule that provides the opening track, Fool's Gold, a liltingly melodic, bittersweet snapshot of a married woman's adultery, the wedding ring left behind in the hotel bed and Maria the chambermaid who slips it on her finger, transforming its tainted guilt into a pledge of her own fidelity.
Subtly reworking the tune of Bring It On Home To Me, shifting its blues origins to a roots country base while retaining the same lyrical theme, Without Love finds him sounding a little like James Taylor while The Sound of Hallelujahs brings those Art Garfunkel meets Martyn Joseph thoughts to mind again. Inspired by a conversation with his daughter debating the relative merits of Leonard Cohen's original Hallelujah and Jeff Buckley's cover, it becomes a beautiful hymn to endurance and finding faith in the dirt of disappointment.
Set to a tune which, borrows directly from Steve Goodman's The City of New Orleans, Birmingham Hotel is, fairly obviously, a road song with Meuross singing of sleeping in a 'stranger's bed' and thinking of those left behind and the good times and songs shared. Its celebration of the power of song is echoed in the shantyish Singaway (where Maria puts in a reappearance), the voice of the singer becoming the voice of everyone with a story to tell and pain to share.
Perhaps the most lyrically problematic track here is The Priest. Meuross has often used religious motifs, but, cast in traditional folk ballad mode, this is a troubling number about an alcoholic priest, a traveller in need of solace and the bitter betrayal of faith lost. It's like something Chris De Burgh might have once written. Only far better. With the airily gorgeous title track referencing 9/11 and addressing both the causes and the blindness of terrorism without resorting to strident polemic, the remaining material is also rooted in past and contemporary record.
His voice at its most tender, with lines like 'I watch you brush your yellow hair run your fingers through the sun', Until I Hold You Once Again sounds like another love song; until you learn it was written after hearing a mother talk of her daughter, one of the five murdered Suffolk prostitutes. It's heartbreaking. Also born from a news item, the equally moving Valentine is a romantic quasi ghost story that recalls Lance Corporal Matty Hull, killed by friendly fire in Iraq on Valentine's Day 2003.
Of older historical provenance, conjuring thoughts of Don Mclean in his vocal and melody, Lizzie Loved A Highwayman details the true story of Dick Turpin, cleverly entwining the romanticised myth with the rather less glamorous truth of a rapist, murderer and thief. From earlier in the same century comes Martha Went Down To The Well (The Bowes Tragedy), the true Yorkshire story of Roger Wrightson and Martha Railton who, their relationship denied by his family, died of, respectively, exposure and a broken heart. McLean comparisons return, filtered through the influence of Simon and Garfunkel, on the album's marvellous closing number, William Brewster Dreams of America, which documents the journey of one of the Pilgrim Fathers and his family aboard the Mayflower, cleverly finding subtle resonance in the fact that, of his children, Patience died leaving Love and Fear to build the legacy of America.
But, good though the song is, the album's tour de force is And Jesus Wept on which, sounding uncannily like a young Harvey Andrews, he tells the story of Harry Farr who, in 1916, suffering from shellshock, was shot for desertion. A song destined to become a folk classic, it's dedicated to Farr's daughter Gertrude and granddaughter Janet whose efforts led him to become the first of the 306 British soldiers executed in such circumstances to be granted a posthumous pardon.
Arranged and performed with beguiling simplicity and warmth, and evocative of the singer-songwriter folk scene of the late 60s and early 70s as embodied by Ralph McTell, Richard Digance, Gordon Lightfoot, and those mentioned above, this may not have the same cool cachet as those waving the flag for today's folk revival, but it's both Meuross' finest hour and one of the best albums you'll hear this or any year.
Mike Davies April 2008