Many years ago when I lived in Sydney I used to sometimes go down Pitt Street which had some now long-forgotten record stores which would flog off albums for next to nothing, so pre-the days of the internet I’d take a chance on discovering new stuff sometimes just because I liked the song titles or fancied the bloke on the cover. It sometimes paid off as with ‘The Name Above the Title’ by Hastings born musician John Wesley Harding aka Wesley Stace, which opened a door for me to a lifelong love of this man’s music. His mainly acoustic ‘New Deal’ album from 1996 saw him turn away from folk-pop and into a more assured singer-songwriter sound, and the track ‘God Lives Upstairs’ with its country bent still to me has one of the sweetest melodies I’ve ever heard. Wes is now US-based but his shows are magical if you ever get the chance to see him live. Oh and his novels are superb too. So much talent. Argh.
Songs for the apocalypse: John Wesley Harding “God Lives Upstairs”
