Sometime collaborators Boo Hewerdine and Brooks Williams bridge the distance between Glasgow and Cambridge to come with State Of The Union album #4 – and it’s a vibrant, life-affirming collection of bluesy acoustic gems.

Release Date:  29^th November 2024

Label: Reveal Records

Formats: CD / Digital

A COLLABORATION OF OLD FRIENDS

State Of The Union is a sometime collaboration between two of our old friends – Boo Hewerdine and Brooks Williams.  It’s a potent combination, that’s for sure; both are masters of the acoustic guitar, both are composers of great ability, both are excellent vocalists, equally comfortable in the spotlight or on the backing vocalists’ sideline and – and this is important – each is a natural foil for the other.  It’s a marriage made in heaven, you could say.

Boo and Brooks first got together as long ago as 2010 and Paper Tigers is the fourth State Of The Union album.  Distance inevitably plays a role in the sporadic nature of the collaboration – Boo is based in Glasgow whilst Brooks operates out of Cambridge, so they’re not exactly close neighbours.  Nevertheless, they’ve managed to get together in fits and starts over the past year or so to write and record the material for Paper Tigers, and the world is a happier place for them having done so.

Paper Tigers sees SOTU back working with Mark Freegard in Kyoti, the Glasgow studio where Mark oversaw the recording of the first pair of SOTU albums – State of the Union (2011) and Snake Oil (2012) and, it seems, the combination of familiar surroundings and a trusted hand upon the tiller was an effective means of focusing minds.  Paper Tigers was in the can after just a day and half of live recording – and no overdubs were necessary, either.

TWO MASTERS OF THEIR CRAFT

Both Boo and Brooks acknowledge that SOTU offers a unique opportunity for each of them to exercise a “…playful quality that is beyond their solo work.”  I suppose that’s one way of putting it.  Suffice to say that Paper Tigers is a collection of songs that are, variously, vibrant, immediate, intense, even life-affirming.  It’s a real pleasure to sit back and listen to two masters of their craft playing songs that are both immediately likeable and unquestionably durable – and to sense the enjoyment that they both clearly derive from doing so.  Paper Tigers is an album that I’ll be playing and savouring for many years to come.

It’s pointless, with an album like Paper Tigers, to attempt to sift out the highlights of each particular track.  Throughout the album, the playing is exemplary, the lead vocals are rich and mellow, the harmony vocals – a particular feature of just about every track – are pristine and the songs are light and easy; indeed, I can virtually guarantee that you’ll be singing along to most of these songs after hearing just one chorus of each.  Blues and ragtime provide the base formula for most of the songs and it’s a genre that both Boo and Brooks are thoroughly comfortable with – and expert practitioners thereof.

HAPPY BLUES

If there’s such a thing as ‘happy blues’ (and, if there isn’t, perhaps there should be…) then it’s a form that’s encapsulated in songs like opening number Jonesin’ Over You, the lighthearted Horsefeathers and Thomas Baker Knight’s bluesy Lonesome Town, the only non-original song on the album.  In each song, Boo and Brooks take turns at the lead vocalist’s mic, the harmonies are spot-on and each player provides an object lesson in how to play the acoustic guitar – and make a thoroughly enjoyable sound in the process.

Elsewhere, Boo and Brooks channel The Everleys in the wistful title track, explore the deeper realms of sentimentality in Butterfly Wings – a glorious country waltz – and in the delightful Turtle Dove, and demonstrate the fulfilling potential of a pair of acoustic guitars in Taste of the Onion, the album’s “obligatory instrumental.”  Why Does the Nightingale Sing? is slow, bluesy and warm and, with lyrics like “That’s all folks, that’s all you get – Goodnight Vienna and… with regret, that’s all folks, there’s nothing else to see, I’m over you – you’ll get over me,” the guys show that a relationship can be ended in the happiest of ways, with the bouncy ragtime of That’s All Folks.

THE CONTENTMENT OF A DIFFERENT, CALMER AGE

There’s a warm, 1940s, fondness to closing track, If I Was Your Guardian Angel but, if I was pressed to pick a favourite from the twelve songs that comprise Paper Tigers, then perhaps I’d go for my pick of the bluesy rags, Saint-Louis-Du-Ha!Ha!  The song is Boo’s and Brooks’s tribute to the Canadian town of the same name – the only town in the world to have two exclamation marks in its name.  The slide guitar solo is exquisite and the pair’s bluesy vocals evoke the contentment of a different, calmer age.  It embodies the spirit and feel of the whole album.

Boo Hewerdine and Brooks Williams – a marriage made in heaven.  Let’s hope that we don’t have to wait another seven years for the next State Of The Union album.

Not featured on Paper Tigers, but get a feel for what State Of The Union are all about by watching the duo perform their song, Darkness, live in the studio, here:

Brooks Williams Online: Website / Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram / YouTube

Boo Hewerdine Online: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / YouTube

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