Sixteen years on, The Durutti Column plug the gap with Renascent and how recognisable it all sounds

It’s been sixteen years since The Durutti Column last released an album. That’s quite some gap, and you could forgive Vini Reilly for taking his time. Renascent is the result, and the first thing that strikes you is just how recognisable it all sounds. There’s no big attempt to announce a comeback. No dramatic opening designed to remind us that one of Manchester’s most distinctive musical voices is back. Instead, there’s a piano, a little percussion and that guitar: Reilly’s guitar – dancing in the gaps of everything else and gently conducting traffic. Within seconds, you know exactly where you are, and that is probably the best thing about Renascent.

The Sound Of Durutti

The opening run of Echoes in the Memory, Your Shadow at Morning and The Present and Time Past establishes the mood pretty quickly. These are gentle, thoughtful pieces, but they’re not background music. There’s enough going on to keep pulling you back in. Reilly has always been particularly good at using space. A guitar phrase doesn’t have to fill the room. Sometimes it just needs to appear in the right place. There’s plenty of that here, with piano and guitar given room more to breathe rather than being buried beneath layers of production.

It does make for an album that rewards patience. This isn’t one to throw on when you’re looking for an instant hook. Give it some time and the little details start to emerge. There’s a melancholy running through these opening tracks too. It’s not particularly gloomy, but there’s a definite sense of looking back. You get the feeling that time, memory and everything that comes with them are never very far away. Then Liars arrives and things take a turn.

A Gear Shift

Liars and Scammer are probably the two tracks that feel most connected to the world outside Reilly’s usual introspective space. The titles suggest something fairly confrontational, but the music doesn’t exactly come out fighting – that’s not really Reilly’s way. There’s more disappointment than anger, more observation than protest. It’s almost as though he’s looking at the mess around him and wondering what happened rather than standing on a soapbox and telling us how to fix it.

Caoilfhionn Rose appears on Agonistes and Sargasso Sea, and the change is welcome. Her contribution adds some warmth to an album that can otherwise feel quite solitary. The tracks don’t suddenly become conventional duets either. Rose is brought into the Durutti world rather than the other way round, and it works.

The Guitar Is Still The Star

For all the changes in technology and production over the years, the thing that matters most here is still Reilly’s guitar. It’s beautiful without becoming showy. There are moments with a hint of flamenco, others that wander towards ambient territory, and plenty where the playing is so delicate that you almost wonder if you imagined it.

Vapour in a Matchbox is a good example. It doesn’t seem particularly interested in going anywhere in a hurry. The same can be said of Your Shadow at Evening and For Friends Everywhere: they drift around, picking up little ideas and letting them go again.That won’t work for everyone but if you’re prepared to settle into it, there’s a lot to discover, particularly in the guitar work.

Not A Nostalgia Trip

There’s always a danger when an artist returns after such a long absence that the new material becomes an exercise in nostalgia. Renascent avoids that.

Of course, you can hear echoes of the earlier records. The Durutti Column have such a distinctive sound that any new album is inevitably going to carry some of that history with it. Yet, this doesn’t sound like Reilly trying to recreate The Return of the Durutti Column; nor does it feel like an attempt to compete with the more experimental records that followed. It’s simply another chapter, and that feels particularly significant given what Reilly has been through.

Three strokes and years of isolation would be enough to stop most people in their tracks. Yet here he is, making another Durutti Column record. There’s no need for the album to make a big deal of that. In fact, it’s probably better that it doesn’t.

The Final Word

There has been some suggestion that Renascent could be the final Durutti Column album. If that proves to be the case, it’s a pretty fitting record to go out on, although not because it sounds like a farewell – it doesn’t. Instead, it feels like Reilly doing what he has always done. Finding melodies, experimenting with textures and letting that extraordinary guitar playing carry the music.

Sixteen years is a long time to wait for a new album. Renascent doesn’t try to make up for the wait by being bigger, louder or more ambitious than it needs to be. It’s just very good at being a Durutti Column record, and frankly, after sixteen years, what more could you ask for?

Here’s Liars:

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