High-class new studio album from singer-songwriter at the peak of his craft.
Will Varley seems to be building quite a reputation. The English singer-songwriter splits his time between his native Kent, where this, his seventh studio album was put together, and the US, where his writing collaborations have garnered much praise and respect. His celebrants include the likes of Billy Bragg, who guests on the new album, and Adam Duritz of Counting Crows fame.
“Machines Will Never Learn To Make Mistakes Like Me” will do nothing but enhance this burgeoning reputation. Alongside friend and co-collaborator Tom Farrer, Varley has added rich, luscious production to this album making the songs easy on the ear. This is no slow burn. This is an album that makes an impact on first listen, and any suspicion that first impressions may have been overblown is quickly dispelled on every subsequent listen.
Opening track ‘Long Way Back To Now’ introduces us to Varley’s vocals, a thing of gravitas and depth, and, with a restrained acoustic backing, this is a song where previous descriptions of Varley’s songs as ‘Dylanesque’ make sense. The excellent ‘Venus Returns’, one of many tracks competing for the title of ‘album highlight’, takes that opener, raises the bar a notch, and does nothing to dispel that oft-used comparison.
If those songs reinforce previous experience of what Varley is about, then much of the rest of the album showcases how the artist can bang out radio-friendly songs with the best and goes a long way to explain away the demand for his services across the pond. ‘Different Man’ has been chosen as the lead single for the album, and with full band accompaniment, that aforementioned lush production is demonstrated here to marvellous effect. Varley explains, “I did a lot of touring in the US and Europe over the years, opening for various bands and sleeping on rickety old tour buses that were close to being written off. This is a song about that, and it details some of the scrapes we got into.”
The album continues Varley’s decade-long exploration of the human condition, this time focusing on society’s ever-present threat of impending apocalypse, how we marry this with the mundane and the minutiae of our everyday lives and how we can find hope. Sentiments amply demonstrated by the next, equally memorable, ‘Home Before The World Ends’.
The title track is a more pared-back offering, notable for some gorgeous Simon & Garfunkel-sounding harmonies. Harmonies in fact, all provided by Varley himself; more evidence of the high-class production that Varley and Farrer have brought to proceedings. It is a fittingly classy song in keeping with one of the standout albums of the Americana year to date.
