A manifesto for life from Hasting’s finest.
Hastings. 1066 and all that. Oh, and the hotbed of crime that kept Inspector Foyle on his toes during the war years. For fear of mimicking the Pythons, apart from that, what has Hastings ever done for us? Well, for Americana fans, it is enough to know that for the last 5 years it has been home for the hugely talented Jason McNiff. A troubadour oft championed on these pages, McNiff returns with his 9th album recorded just up the road in the studio of Matt Armstrong in St Leonard’s-on-Sea.
As well as engineering and producing, Armstrong features with drums and double bass on the album and the easy chemistry of the pair is evident throughout what is a lovely listen. The magic the man weaves with his guitar is a well-known hallmark of a McNiff album and, as if to prove the point, the opening track ‘Song Of Everything’ showcases everything that the artist is about. Sublime and meticulous guitar work is the core around which the song is built. McNiff’s storytelling, combined with that skill with a guitar brings, for those of us old enough to remember, a young Al Stewart to mind.
The title track, ‘Everything’s A Song’ was a co-write with Gabriel Moreno, Gibraltarian poet and singer-songwriter with whom McNiff has been touring celebrating the music and poetry of Leonard Cohen. There is more than a whiff of that Cohen influence in McNiff’s songs and here, never more so than on the English translation of Italian partisan anthem, ‘Bella Ciao’. It is so Cohen-esque in style and tone that it is difficult to believe that the man had nothing to do with it.
‘Everything’s A Song’ is a tonic of an album. The songs are beautifully crafted, deceptively simple in their arrangement yet no less arresting for that. McNiff’s love of poetry is evident in all his writing with songs that tell stories and create images in the mind. This type of songster demands that the lyrics be heard and absorbed so it should come as no surprise that, between them, McNiff and Armstrong never let the musical accompaniment, as glorious as it is, outshine those distinctive vocals. A word here also for Richard Moore’s violin which reaches a crescendo on the back-to-back tracks ‘Chef Song’ and subsequent instrumental ‘Wedding Dance.’
‘Everything’s a Song’ is, for Jason McNiff, his manifesto. He believes that everything can be turned into art, into a song. Here, McNiff has demonstrated once again his talents as a singer-songwriter and the album does nothing but enhance his already well-established reputation as a darling of the Americana circuit.
