Look out Sam Fender, Michael McGovern has you in his sights!

Release Date: 7th November 2025

Label: Cauldron Music

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

CONFIDENT CARRIAGE OF THE BATON

It can sometimes be confusing keeping up with the bevy of new names pouring out out from Glasgow these days, so vibrant a hotbed of inspiration it is. Thin White Road is actually McGovern’s second release, with his first, Highfield Suite, a product of covid and isolation, largely put together alone, in his bedroom. But, then produced by Bill Shanley, the Irish producer and guitarist, whose diverse track record encompasses Ray Davies, Gilbert O’Sullivan, Mary Black and Sinead O’Connor, a wider audience was already guaranteed than for many other a duvet diva. Shanley returns the favour for this release, but there are now full blown band arrangements aplenty, to complement those that need only his voice and nylon-strung guitar.

There is an undoubted feel of a folk tradition running in the veins of these 10 songs, but there is more, a whole lot more. So much to say that the association I first made was with North Shield’s Sam Fender, if raised in Glasgow’s Irish pubs, and, together with Paul Brady saying “I love it! What an unexpected gem!“, well, neither’s going to do your credibility any harm. Add in the terrifying reality that McGovern is still only 26 years old, and this old codger’s heart is warmed by his confident carriage of the singer-songwriter baton.

A COLLABORATIVE OF KINDRED SPIRITS

It is fair to comment that he has progressed from harnessing his muse alone and unaccompanied. Here, half the songs are co-writes, with clearly kindred spirits. Three are with the evocatively named Scott C. Park, one of the latest singers to scoop up the soubriquet of the Stornoway Springsteen, and who provides much of the guitar, backing vocals and most the bass across this disc. (It should be noted that McGovern features equivalently, on guitar and additional vocals, for Park’s own releases.) And two are with Jamie Sturt, of Glasgow band, Atlas, who is also around to add his vocal contributions. Shanley, clearly, adds his guitar to the brew, and whether by chance, choice or opportunity, given the album was recorded at Black Bay studios, Lewis, island resident, Josie Duncan, also was able to drop by to add her distinctive vocal, as heard with Kathryn Tickell and An Danssa Dub.

A GOOD TRICK, DONE THIS WELL

Time to strap on your ears, with the title track first out. Fingerpicked guitar is the first sound you hear, with ominous dark cloud fiddle hovering on the horizon. McGovern’s voice is a mid-pitched gentle burr that purrs along with appeal, and very attractive it is to, blindsiding you then, with the sudden change in pitch, mood and dynamic. As drums, electric guitar and piano thunder in, so McGovern jumps an octave and doubles in volume. It is an old trick, but a good trick, when this well done. A brief saxophone adds to the sense of exhilaration, McGovern then climbing still higher and louder, before all the instruments join in a triumphant highland riff or reel, probably both. Blimey, if Fender can bag hit singles and music industry gongs, give this fella a go!

Ode To Laurie starts acapella, with McGovern, Duncan and Niamh Corkey in sweetly wavering harmonies. Acoustic guitar strings it into folk country territory, piano first and then fiddle joining the fray. The piano is McGovern’s own and has the sparse only-the-notes-that-matter deftness of Roy Bittan, the fiddle coming from Ali Caplin. A rhythm section slots unobtrusively in, rim clicks mainly, from Callum Little, abetted by Park and Shanley on electric guitar and bass, this time around.. Vocally McGovern is now gentler, and closer to Adam Holmes in timbre, his soft accent aiding that comparison. When the song ends on a brief chiming of piano notes, it is quite a moment.

BRAVURA

In almost a return to the first album and it’s bareness, Evelyn is a roll around a picked guitar motif, a song to lost love, with the melody crafted from the tune his voice carries so carefully. However, a slow and graceful growl of fauxchestration begins to unfurl on the horizon. Beside the synth strings and the acoustic guitar, bass and fiddle can be heard, if you try. The first full McGovern composition, after the McGovern/Park of the first and McGovern/Sturt of the second, it is a stunner, with a bravura opening sentence that echoes the close of Billy Bragg’s Walk Away Renée (Version). Go listen.

The Death Of Ann Miller is blessed/cursed with just too retro an arrangement for me, all Billy Joel meets Gilbert O’Sullivan, my blame thus on the producer, as the song is better than it’s baggage, however jolly is the sax of Jimmie Steele and the choogly keys. Having said, others may find it a highpoint. The Harbour is, for me, much finer fare, if indubitably Cohen-esque in style. With Sturt and Duncan adding bvs for this song, it is one to add to the roster of those that mention a Jolene.

SONGS TO MAKE YOU THINK

McGovern continues to ring the changes for the almost a lullaby of I Heard The Thunder Cry. The contrast between the crack in McGovern’s now softer still vocal and the Island girl chorale of Duncan and Corkey is a delight, even if Corkey actually hails from the East Coast mainland. That same mood sustains, if with a darker subject, for The Will: “The day we met to write the will, I was pacing round the kitchen“. Harmonies grace this desperately sad song, that somehow rings true also with hope. Caplin’s fiddle is suitably sombre, the piano, also him, likewise. “Haunted by the fear of living“, it is a song to make you think, and is supposed to. The brief coda of piano and strings drives home the wretchedness of grief.

If you think the jauntiness of I Made A New Friend represents a change in tone, maybe don’t linger too long on the lyric. A terrific song that blends elements of Paul Brady, possibly explaining his recognition, and of Mike Scott, in his raggle-taggle years, it is impossibly bleak, even after the last. Buoyed by bouncy, and I think acoustic, bass from Shanley, the core band of McGovern, Park and Little rock out a rockabilly swagger of either redemption or it’s opposite. I’m still trying to fathom which. Either way it is the take home and keep earworm from the album. Perhaps.

A HYMN, SHOCKING AND SUDDEN

Perhaps? McGovern writes some considerable introduction, in the sleeve notes, to In The Garden, the final track. These words outline what he was striving to say in this song, and who he was trying to channel in so doing. It takes a brave twenty something to mention Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan as his ciphers, and some would say foolhardy. But he delivers. As his voice soars in the opening verse, it imbues this song of distance and distancing with a hymnal quality, added to then by the ethereal vocalisations of Duncan and Corkey. Ending on an unaccompanied McGovern, the end is both shocking and sudden. “So let me sleep where fear can’t get me, smooth my skin, dull my pain“.

A JIGSAW JOURNEY

This album is a journey, a narrative, with each of the songs seeming to slot together, like the pieces in a jigsaw, even if the finish then looks quite unlike the initial expected picture on the box. If you like a set of strong tunes, sung well and put together with skill and precision, yes, you will like this. If you like music to make you think, well, you’ll like this even more.

Here is a live outing of the title track, looking to contain the main players from the album:

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