All work and no play confirms Knightley as one of our best. The Winter Yards is out now.

Release Date: 4th October 2024

Label: Elm Farm Music

Format: CD / Digital

PUTTING THE HOURS IN

Y’know, and he’ll hate me for saying it, but Steve Knightley isn’t half putting the hours in. No sooner had he put Show Of Hands to bed, after their gruelling bye for now tour of two halves, he was up and running his new band, Dream In Colours, popping up at festivals right left and centre. That’d be enough for most, but, no, here’s a solo album, his umpteenth, if you include his myriad digital releases, if the first for 17 years, with an extensive accompanying tour also unleashed. To fill in the time before he tours Dream In Colours, I guess. I mean, give us a break, man, some of us mere mortals can’t possibly compete with that work rate. Especially at, shh, three score and bloomin’ 10.

Enough of that, as, however or why, he has, and, no surprise, it’s a corker. Twelve songs, some of which have had previews, in some way, shape or form, notably the co-write with Blue Rose Code’s Ross Wilson, which he has guested at several BRC shows over the last year or so, prompting an oh good from those familiar. That aside, he tackles a welter of subjects dear to his heart, his pen always adjacent thereto, each on his sleeve, sung with his polished mahogany dream of a voice. I think it gets better, year on year.

TRANSACTIONS

From the second Transactions, the first song, starts, you know where you are. Over a wash of a background synth-scape and the clatter of tablas, from Johnny Kalsi, need you ask, that voice eases out. A gloriously lugubrious instrument, a quiet klaxon of discontent, it heeds where no-one else will. Curiously autumnal, if it had a colour, it would be the reds and browns of the equinox, making the time of this release perfect. But the song content is anything but pastoral, a diatribe against, or probably more lament, capturing immigration, an expanding elderly population and the post office scandal. How very woke, you say, but it manages to steer well clear of any sense of virtue signalling by being, at simplest, just a damn fine song. Did I say his vocals are immaculately yearning?

You may have seen the video for The Ride, bracketed so as to become the titular track. This, and the song, does for fairgrounds and showmen what Country Life did for the rural dispossessed. A backing again of acoustic guitars and synthetic fauxchestration, with muted percussion, it is classic Knightley, his characteristic knack of throwing in the odd spoken word, ahead of soaring then into a higher key, duly present. He says he was looking deliberately more at Springsteen, Tom Waits and Peter Gabriel as lodestones for this record, and this song sort of provides the evidence. It sounding a little like Gabriel singing from the Nebraska songbook. (Avon?) The lonesome trail harmonica comes courtesy Phillip Henry ( Edgelarks, Gigspanner Big Band).

A LOVE OF LATIN

Knightley’s love of a bit of Latin surfaces on Maria (Recuerdos), where, as well as picking back up his trusty cuatro, has him recruit both old buddy, Phil Beer, and new buddies, Track Dogs. A lilting love song, or of lost love long ago, it gambols along with a swelteringly mariachi sway, bookended by Howard Brown’s trumpet. Beer’s scatter of notes, toward the end, is unmistakeable. A further change of mood comes with the country and tamar of If You Come Back, with Henry this time adding dobro, as well as harmonica. It is probably as good a time as any to take note of the drumming of Mark Tucker, present on every track so far, if his percussion paired with Kalsi for the opener, and with Robbie K. Jones’ cajon for the last song. Here he is centre solid.

I Tried is a song that Knightley was trying out on the last SoH tour, in his solo slot, as well as with Dream In Colours. Here this plangent cri de coeur gets a bit of a brush and polish, with backing vocals from True Foxes, aka Amie Parsons and Chloe Payne. The washes of synth and the bass come, in addition to the drums, from a multi-tasking Tucker. It is exactly the sort of melody at which Knightley excels.

If a sense of melancholy imbues the last, Requiem, which follows, is positively distraught, largely brought about by the tremendously evocative background chorale. To the tune of The Parting Glass, and otherwise unaccompanied, it is what it says in the title, with the protagonist courting a send-off without ceremony. Immensely moving, if you don’t find something in your eye, go listen again. The Lost Sound Dartmoor Folk Choir provide the additional voices for this song, and it was originally to be part of 2016’s Centenary album, by SoH, in commemoration of WW1. The shock of applause, as it closes, and the realisation this was recorded live, is profound.

I’LL NEVER FORGIVE YOU

A song also recalled from earlier live shows, if more for the introduction, is I’ll Never Forgive You. Possibly the closest to a conventional folk-blues construction, it is the lightest song here, melodically, perhaps sticking out purely by the strength of the songs about it. The Knightley/Ross collaboration, Remember This Kiss, follows, with some stately piano from Matt Clifford, who provides such duties whenever required. Unashamedly romantic, it is essentially gentle. The two writers trade verses, the switch from Knightley to Ross raising goose-bumps. a swoony swoony song, and, if it is more sentimental than one associates with the Devonian, the influx of Caledonian confessional quite suits him.

The Mermaid aka The Wedding Song will be a great audience pleaser, I’m sure, a very jolly singalong swagger that brings a lot of familiar melodies together in a convivial melting pot. Beer and Henry are each present, sparring their instrumental prowess on fiddle and dobro, which, for me, are the most potent parts. In mood, it is two parts Blood Wedding (Oysterband), one part Marie’s Wedding, and is far too jolly for me. Praise be, then, that SoH warhorse Exile then gets a solo turn in the spotlight. this wonderfully maudlin song fitting far better my mindset, but horses for courses. Actually Dave Sanderson here provides the elegiac piano, pre-guessing Clifford’s other job, with the Rolling Stones, was then taking precedence for Knightley’s best man. It is a beautiful arrangement of a beautiful song, with more of Henry’s tear-jerking dobro.

RED HANDED

Red Handed is a many layered piece, with a flickering orchestral string backing, real and, probably, otherwise. Fiddle wunderkind, and Dream In Colours bandmate, Bennett Cerven provides some of these, and it as close to a melodramatic 60s pop song as Knightley has yet written. Think a mix of Gene Pitney and Barry Ryan, if with Knightley’s voice.

This leads swiftly into the African gospel hues of Song For Wickham, with Forest Folk Club giving it the full Soweto. Commissioned by the Hampshire village parish council, ahead the pandemic, it is the same village that is the home for the yearly festival, and where Knightley’s chum and DiC bandmate Johnny Kalsi, is patron. Plus, I hadn’t realised Knightley had spent his first 5 years in this neck of the woods. With a spoken paean, towards the close, and Kalsi’s tabla’s gracing the track, it makes for a strangely apt conclusion to this really rather fine record.

Here’s that video, of The Ride aka The Winter Yards:

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