Last week Kimberly Bright picked a track by Justin Townes Earle’s collaborator and friend Scotty Melton whose songs such as ‘Me and the Devil’ she described as “rigorously honest… unflinching depictions of life and psychological landscapes.” We move on this week to a completely different artist but one who also sang about the devil back in 2016 on his ‘Ghosts of the Morning Sun’ album. Will Cookson is an English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist working loosely within the alt-folk genre. His albums are terrific but at their best his songs can be just superb. Exhibit A is ‘As the Devil Pleases’ – with its evocative imagery of “Broken ice on an empty sea” and “Hidden cracks in your head” it’s all a bit haunting – and it’s a song that stayed with me long after the first time I heard it – one I come back to often, that’s if I can summon up the courage.
AUK’s Chain Gang: Will Cookson “As the Devil Pleases”
