Written by: Dave Cantrell
If you’re avid about this noise we love and are lucky enough to survive through five or six decades of it there are moments and movements that have – and will – rise so mightily above the detritus that far too often passes as marketable pop music that they rival the – alleged – power of a religious conversion, full as they are with epiphanies and joy and a sense of life-changingness that don’t merely stay with you forever but, in some sweet insidious way, alter your brain chemistry to such a degree that you emerge inviolably, wonderfully, and however indefinably, a new person. The early 90s – beginning, oddly enough, in 1989 with arrival off the Stone Roses’ debut – was one of those for this writer and, I suspect, millions of others, and, I’d (rather forcefully) argue its apotheosis was 1992 but that rather academic, easily debated assertion aside, the one thing I can say with utter certainty is that, for me, it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Reeling as I never had before – and thankfully haven’t ever since – from a freshly broken heart, the explosion of the (rather lazily dubbed) Britpop scene was just what the rhythm doctor ordered (a testament, by the way, in which I’d go so far as to include Oasis seeing as their first couple albums still rank even as their subsequent work became increasingly, well, rank). Bursting with a pop aplomb, suffused with intelligencce and wit, and, no surprise, generally melodic as fck (we’ll leave the everloving Daisy Chainsaw and their giddily chaotic ilk for another time), it was a scene underwritten by a fresh new landscape of indie labels – Situation Two, Wiiija, the by-then already legendary 4AD to name but three – the most consistently of which was the lovingly scattershot and still-enduring Too Pure, home to the frenetic kinetic and inimitable Th’ Faith Healers (seeing them live in 1993 in San Francisco one of the most breathtaking performances in this author’s long, long life of live shows), the daring darling intrigue of Stereolab and, not insignificantly, PJ Harvey’s debut Dry along with notable others, among which the none-more-notable, David Callahan-led Moonshake, whose first album Eva Luna didn’t simply knock me sideways but seemed to open up a fresh new chamber in my listening heart.
Shapeshifting, knowing but vulnerable, its offhand archness of tone offset by its ability to nonetheless scorch your senses, there was this peculiar, somewhat elliptical directness to the Moonshake vibe, not least due the sinuous, often minor key but incandescent guitar lines snaking through the mix that somehow managed to simultaneously capture via its melodies while leaving you pleasingly off-balance with its cleverly disjointed structures. It was, in a phrase, intriguing beyond measure (much as, by the way, 80s precursor band The Wolfhounds had been even as they were a bit more visceral) and I like many others was hooked on the Callahan MO forevermore, a not unhappy – in fact, rather ecstatic – predicament that has only grown stronger since he went wholly solo (with his middle name now attached) beginning in 2019 and the true wonder here, with the release on the Tiny Global Productions imprint of Down To The Marshes, is how he’s managed to sound more vital than ever and does so from the jump with the unsurprisingly-titled opening cut “The Spirit World.”
Sounding nostalgic and a bit brittle, Callahan’s inimitable baritone intoning over a sunny bed of strummed acoustic and a weave of violin, one senses the artist’s cynicism warming in the sun, there’s a wisp of yearning to the song, English yearning, the kind you can find forever aching in the Avalonian heart. Immediately following, the title track ups the tempo and thereby the mood, being as it is sprightly addictive to a degree not so frequently heard from chez Callahan over the decades but is nonetheless carried with an unforced ease, the band behind him unspooling like a spring being unsprung and to the extent those qualities, those habits of sound could well be considered as your standard bevy of ‘Callahanisms,’ well, of course they are and the fact they’re on display here with an abundant dexterity of purpose and ease is what makes DTTM such an engaging listen.
Take, for instance, “Kiss Chase,” its deft unfurlingness building on itself with some of the craftiest momentum we’ve ever encountered even as, considered in its entirety, it’s ‘just’ a pop song albeit a brilliant one. Or consider “The Montgomery,” moodily acerbic, jagged and evocative with Callahan in his vocal opting for something akin to a professorial tone as he details the sunken fate of the titular U.S. WWII Liberty Cargo ship that still to this day is sitting at the bottom of the Thames loaded to its gills with unexploded ordinance; or, speaking somewhat of which, the tricky-yet-hypnotic “Father Thames and Mother London,” blessed with a relentless pulse of rhythm and a bewitchingly subtle undertow of effects, or the instantly enveloping trance-like feel of final track “Island State,” wistful and forthright in equal measure as it, straight from the artist’s heart, essays the state of the mood in said state’s collective psyche, proclaiming in a tone as modest as it is steadfast that he – which is to say the representative voice of the British soul – is “happy in my island home…[pause]…I’ll go it alone,” a sentiment tendered with what one might call a quiet grit; those all and the two unmentioned (“Refugee Blues” and “Robin Reliant’) amount to a tenderly – if unflinchingly honest – portrait of a nation that, both due to and despite its long and complicated history, endures inside the breast of every soul of every stripe that draws a lung-full of its ocean-fed air, succeeding at this to such a degree that it seems to even tug at the innermost, mostly buried emotions of those that, like myself at the remove of 6000 miles and at least 150 years, are almost wholly still the product of a British bloodline.
But the truest thing about this record? Down To The Marshes, in its essence, resonates at its deepest core with the buzz of this brief, often confounding but always curious existence we’re blessed with no matter our birthplace or background, echoing throughout with the desires, the drive, the desperate love, all the mess that makes us us, defining along its way the tricky cadence of the human soul. And? It rocks, full out. Trust us, you want this one. [get yourself Down To The Marshes here]
