BEATS OF LOVE 

155. Steady Weather LP by Torn Sail

I'M perplexed by the one policy obsessives. Through Christine's e-mail, I helped get my labour MP to actually vote against the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, but it still went through.

Now, hearing a whiff that the tories or reform will repeal it, she's now asked me to pressure them to a manifesto commitment. Like those two parties of darkness will ever comprehend human experience. Yes, I'm politically frustrated and still processing Ma's sudden death whilst the missus attends a prearranged funeral, so I'm feeling out of sorts. 

Thank God then for a bit of sunburst and musical solace, with a timely reminder from Huw that he was hosting a listening party for Torn Sail's third album Steady Weather. Huw has unwittingly kept me afloat because he should be much more popular. If he has the grace to persevere with not being, then I can persevere with the trials and tribulations of my life. I ponder the reasons for him not being and can only find the hazy intensity of the music and an uncompromising approach isn't hitting folk immediately. It says a lot about the modern music listener.

Nick Drake needed future listeners to become much more popular, and maybe Torn Sail does. Thankfully, Murray Scott is carrying on evangelising where I left off and whilst the listening party was intimate, everyone seemed blown away. I was in the back garden and everything that was unruly swayed gently in perfect harmony with the mesmerising guitars. A truly transformative experience. Huw had conceived his three LPs as far back as 2019 and he made the third sound darker when discussing it, like a massive divergence. Thankfully, it's as warm and sunlit as it is, sprawling and epic. I won't harp on coz everyone knows I love this band, other than to say not a guitar strum is unnecessary.

I'm perplexed by Torn Sail. Perplexed why they aren't much more popular coz they let in the light and fully comprehend human experience. An antidote, if ever there was to a dark world.   

https://tornsail1.bandcamp.com/album/steady-weather

BEATS OF LOVE 

154. Ma

SO LUCKY, I had two selfless mothers so quick to love and so slow to judge. Brilliant models of how to live life fully. Religious yet liberal-minded, they made fairer and better choices than the rest of us and had a value system that earned great respect. 

Despite their family commitments, they were both very charitable. Not questioning why someone needs help, but questioning how they can help. My mother was the lynchpin of my UK family. Without her, we grew more anxious, eroding trust, and untying the bonds between us. 

The Missus' mother 'Ma' was the lynchpin of my Nigerian family and its wider community. She came to our wedding in November 2013, imparting her wisdom to us in a short window of time while braving the cold. I saved her from a hard fall when she lost her footing on the elevator in Next, but she saved our marriage by infusing it with her enduring spirit.

With her sad passing, I instantly feel privileged to have had Ma in my life. I feel the profound void she leaves, and I worry for the rest of the family. Like my mother, she lent an ear, and either resolved problems or supported us through difficulties. Despite their boundless patience supporting family recovering from alcoholism or gunshot wounds, they would both rather have been celebrating the birth of a child. They both did it with easy smiles and elegance, despite knowing the deep heartache of widowhood. It's a strength and resilience that I don't see easily in the rest of us.

I will always ache with regret that I didn't fly us out to Lagos for a reunion while Ma was still healthy enough to travel. Instead of the vivid memories we could have made, I am left with a stack of unshelved records that just sit here in silence. It's pretty telling that every Sunday she asks after mother's surviving partner. Only on Sunday we were describing the care home he has just moved into. I wish I wasn't keener on playing my shelved records than staying on the phone longer. Her smiling face brimming with love gave the Missus so much strength and me the comfort of knowing that. Like me, she now walks the world without her mother and closest friend. It pains me to watch her grief collapse her adulthood into childhood vulnerability.

I pray my selfless, wise Ma is at perfect peace. And we honour her by giving, loving without judgment, and living out her true legacy.

BEATS OF LOVE 

153.  Do You Like Worms? (Roll Plymouth Rock) by The Beach Boys

BRIAN WILSON was a true saviour to me. I almost entirely owe my life to Pet Sounds, given how few things mirrored the intense, introspective estrangement I navigated in the late 80s.

Set-aside and bullied mercilessly, and pushed to create by a jealous father, he set the Beach Boys apart. Understanding intricate harmonies whilst tapping into the pop zeitgeist. Still today, the pinnacle of good-time popular music. 

After retiring from live performances in 1964, Wilson poured his experimentation into Pet Sounds. Featuring intricate harmonies, lush orchestration, and deeply emotional lyrics, the album successfully blended commercial success with high art. Complexity made to sound simple is never easy and takes true genius. Exchanging 4 boxes of records in the mid-nineties for my CD box set was an easy decision. 

In the fallout of his aborted masterpiece Smile, bandmates, accustomed to success, played the retro circuit to packed stadiums. His touches of genius on Wild Honey, Holland and Surf's Up whilst mainly laying on his bed full of barbiturate and fast-food are still brilliantly creative. With the conservative brand established, Brian played the part of the led astray leper for years. 

A Smile bootleg and Domenic Priore's Look! Listen! Vibrate! Smile! The Beach Boys, which documents the madness surrounding the sessions, were essential to every discerning music freak. Then in 2011 Capitol finally released all the session recordings onto CDs. This mind-blowing music lifted me into a higher state of grace. I have checked off my ultimate bucket list item. 

That it took that long to let the faithful hear the Smile sessions in all their studio glory tell you how conservative the brand was. More tragedy surrounded his life than his death. In death, those that know understand deeply just how important it was that the competition for pop musical supremacy took place. That Wilson felt tortured into surpassing the studio achievement of the Beatles means we've all benefited. 

That I have a favourite out of all his pure gold is a minor miracle, but this was the tune I played in my head post-op when I realised there was no morphine drip as promised. Literally pulling me through some of my most pained moments in this life. A saviour indeed.  

BEATS OF LOVE 

152.  Bryter Layter LP by Nick Drake 

THERE WAS an actual time just prior to its studio completion when this product threatened to sell and make everyone involved in its production thrilled.

A period that echoes the hopeful defiance voiced by Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in real time during the aftermath of Tet offensive. That cut through to society at large. Times then, of optimistic bravery.

Cutting himself off from the security and safety of Cambridge to decamp in the capital, Drake's more urbanised lyrics appear to suggest he felt dwarfed rather than looming large. There's a vulnerability but determination in his voice. A drum kit changed the studio dynamic with Fairport players, amongst others adding to his distinctive finger picked guitar, creating a more upbeat sound. That said, Kirby's arrangements maintain that distinctive wispy pastoral elegance that marked out his debut. 

We all recall playing tunes to amazed small pockets of folk and then mapping the path to a grander scale. Forget about the dark stuff. This record maps a path by searching out pop tones and scaling things up perfectly. Forget too the theorised accounts of its delay and subsequent commercial failure, but bask in the breezy majesty of its repeat play. And let that reticent but compellingly transportive voice whisk you clean away.

We haven’t had a truly influential political voice cut through the cultural noise since Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, which is a tragedy. But it's no tragedy that nobody has ever topped Drake's jazz-laced folk-pop.