"CPR" (David Crosby Band) (1998)

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"CPR" (1998)

Morrison/That House/One For Every Moment/At The Edge/Somebody Else's Town/Rusty and Blue/Somehow She Knew/Little Blind Fish/Yesterday's Child/It's All Coming Back To Me Now/Time Is The Final Currency

"People's lives fascinate me - all my life I've wanted to understand"

The glib review of this album is that it's the end result of one hell of a year (well, ever so slightly over one year) of extreme highs and lows, delayed a little bit by circumstances. I don't know if you can remember what you were up to in 1994 but I bet it wasn't full of half as many milestones as David Crosby's year. First the IRA checked on their records and discovered that Croz had the mother of all tax bills (one of many unfortunate side effects of a well publicised drug habit in the 1980s when spending had no limits - or paperwork). Secondly Croz had been poorly through most of the year and nearly died from liver failure in November, figuring something was seriously wrong when for the first time ever in his life he found himself unable to hit his instinctive harmonies. A transplant saved his life (eventually; a first donor had been found to be cancerous), but David was in a critical condition for the longest time, his treatment at least in part funded by family, fans and friends (Phil Collins and Robin Williams, gentlemen both, were particularly supportive). Then he discovered that his wife Jan was pregnant with his second child- after oh so many years of (mainly drug-related) years of trying to conceive (the pair became an item somewhere in the late 1970s, marrying in 1987). And then the long-lost first child, conceived when dad was all of twenty and struggling to make ends meet as a musician, got in touch to say 'hello', the pair setting up a first meeting in February 1995. Just to add to the drama, his son James had just found out that he too was about to be a father - making Crosby just about the only person to discover they were both a new father and a new grandfather mere weeks apart. Even for those of us who'd been following Crosby's 'cowboy movie' story with interest, this was one heck of a development in such a short space of time. Crosby's wry response? 'Anyone who thinks God doesn't have a sense of humour isn't watching'.

These events in such a short space of time would have broken lesser spirits, but one of Croz's greatest strengths has always been his resilience. Instead he pushed through across 1995 with an idea for a solution to all of his problems at once. CSN had once again found themselves parked in a siding after releasing the under-rated 'After The Storm' to poor sales and mixed reviews earlier in 1994 (ending their quarter-century contract with Atlantic into the bargain and effectively main Crosby a 'free agent' for the first time in decades), so that source of revenue was out. Staying low profile like Stills or Nash just wasn't possible however: with a new baby on the way and an old debt hanging over him, Crosby set to work with a new band. The group, a trio including guitarist Jeff Pevar and keyboard player James Raymond, were cleverly christened CPR, in homage to both the CSN family name in the use of their initials and the idea that the band had breathed 'new life' into Crosby who had fully expected not to see 1995 at all (CPR is, in technical jargon, Cardio-vascular Resuscitation -  what people do in bad movies and hospital dramas when someone has died and yet still needs to be saved by the end of the film). Jeff had been a friend for a long time, having appeared in CSN's band for a time, a guitarist of taste and subtlety whose playing would embellish the songs without getting in Crosby's way a la Stills or Young circa every single arena tour. As for James, he was a bright talented young kid, with a passion for the sort of jazzy chords and unusual turnings that were perfect for Crosby's unusually structured songs, had an excellent grasp of harmonies not unlike Croz himself - and who just happened to be the son David had given away for adoption all those years ago.

If any of you out there ever need to write an essay on the importance of genetics or nature versus nurture (hey, it's a long shot but you readers have to be an intelligent bunch to know of these albums, never mind get this far through a review of them so you never know) then the Crosby-Raymond story should be your first case study. James never knew who his father was - all he knew was that his mother had been forced to give him up for adoption after the dad ran off and she had no money to look after him herself. Thankfully James adored his adopted parents who were caring enough to support his creativity and his burgeoning talent for music (James had piano lessons at a young age, about the time his dad was re-writing the music rule-book with CSN). Raymond found he had a natural harmony voice and developed a fondness not for rock and roll so much as for jazz with a tendency to play unusual tunings and break the songwriting rules (sound familiar?) He'd even half-joked with his adoptive parents that at least one of his parents must be a famous musician, but had never seriously considered that he might be Crosby's son, despite later owning a couple of his dad's recordings alongside an impressive record collection. On discovering who his dad really was it suddenly all made sense - although even then James never considered that he'd be able to make music with him; instead he just wanted to talk and to tell David that he'd had a lovely upbringing, with none of the usual baggage that goes with adoption. When the pair met up their rapport was instant, with both men finding a staggering amount of bands in common in their collections. One of the first thing Crosby does with any musicians he admires is play with them (second only to smoking illicit substances with them in the dim and distant past) and the pair found a most extraordinary musical bond as well. Enjoying having a writing partner who understood his back story and using music as the perfect chance to bond with his son, Crosby set about doing what he did best - writing out his recent experiences to better make sense of them, ushering in a prolific period for a writer who always struggled to write with any regularity with a whole new jazzier sound to play around with. Whilst many fans assume the new jazz-age style of this CD is all Raymond, actually Crosby had been heading that way anyway ('Camera' and 'Street To Lean On' from 'After The Storm' had both been heading in that direction - and Crosby famously spent the whole of a 1966 Byrds tour playing a tape of John Coltrane endlessly, annoying both his fellow bandmates and passing police officers along the way!)

That's the part of the story that the few reviews of this oh so obscure CD half-cover, but there's another story across 'CPR' working in parallel and one that dates back almost as far as James' birth. The grief and guilt and relief on this album doesn't just date back to the changes of 1994; instead Crosby seems to have used his recent near-death experience to think about those he's lost down the years, the way that their legacies have been treated since they were left behind and his own fears about what he almost left behind. If there's a theme to this album it's about making the most of your time, because it really can be very very short. The album's first song, the first Crosby-Raymond collaboration, is written for Jim Morrison and Crosby's objections to the Oliver Stone film about The Doors that tried so hard to paint Morrison's death as inevitable and beautiful. 'He was lost and I don't think he wanted it that way' is Crosby's summary of his one-time rival, wishing that instead of admiring him people had been out to help him. 'Somehow She Knew' cuts even closer to home, an AA-style admittance that all those 'lost' years had been because Crosby was still in denial over losing his girlfriend Christine Hinton in a car crash in 1971 (most of Crosby's classic first solo record 'If Only I Could Remember My Name' is for her) and about how we can never really get over the death of someone close to us - how the power of the feelings can be distracted but always lurk, barely hidden, below the surface, ready to be set off at a moment's notice. Other songs touch on the theme of Crosby's own mortality. 'That House' is loosely based on a nightmare Crosby had long had - which had even appeared in his 1988 autobiography 'Long Time Comin' - about being trapped in a house full of riches and never making his way out in time. Even before this album Crosby realised that his sub-conscious was really warning him not to waste time, that there were too many things to do that he might never get a chance to do. 'It's All Coming Back To Me Now' is a rare history-song about Crosby's career to date, a witty riposte to the earlier haze of 'If Only I Could Remember My Name' with a now-clean and sober Crosby fully aware of life and it's purpose (whilst the song is a new one, the title had been around for a while - it's the title of a live album  fact). 'At The Edge' reflects on how close Crosby came to losing everything he cared for and passing on his wisdom to his fans as best he can in case they ever need to remember it on their death-beds. 'Time Is The Final Currency' adds a new slant to all this: that in the end it doesn't matter how rich or powerful or popular you are, the only currency that will really matter when you're dying is the time you no longer have.

We are, of course, used to hearing Crosby sing about himself: fans have long come to treasure the occasional overwhelmingly autobiographical piece of music which are often the best thing on the album ('Where Will I Be? > Page 43' from 'Graham Nash, David Crosby', 'Carry Me' from 'Wind On The Water', 'I'd Swear There Was Somebody There' from 'If Only I Could Remember My Name' which doesn't even needs words to pass on its grief and guilt). But even by those standards CPR is a special record, one that features even more of the 'real' Crosby than ever before. It's no surprise that so many songs from this album found their way to the Crosby box set 'Voyage' - if this album isn't necessarily the best Crosby made away from CSN, then it is certainly amongst the most important and revelatory. Along with those familiar-yet-weirdly-different harmonies (the opening of James' haunting 'Yesterday's Child' - his own moving confessional Crosby-style song - is almost 'evil' CSN, the usual blend pulling the song downwards to the depths of hell rather than soaring up to heaven as per usual) it all sounds so different this time; more vital, more important, even more crucial than what Crosby usually has to tell us. The closest thing we'd ever had before this album was 'Delta' but even that comparison isn't quite right; that gorgeous ballad was Crosby's sub-conscious admitting that he'd lost his way and might never find it again; this time the album is upfront, all too aware at the wrong paths taken in the past and adamant that we should learn from what Crosby's just experienced as much as he clearly has. Just a few years ago Crosby was coasting, with the 'A Thousand Roads' covers album of 1993 the sound of a man who has nothing to say but is having too good a time to stop; by contrast this is an album that can't waste a single precious second. As a result there's very little filler even by Crosby standards, the best CSN-related release outside the box set since 'Daylight Again' in 1982 or - in terms of Crosby's contributions - 'CSN' from 1977. However 'CPR' is even more powerful than either of those records, a rich if harrowing emotional experience that will haunt you

So why have you most likely never heard of it? *Sigh*, the answer, not for the last time, is money. Given the context is seems an especial shame that a release this important and which Crosby clearly wanted to spread loud and fast ended up being all but forgotten. Without the clout of Atlantic all of CSN found it hard to find new contracts and all signed with smaller, more independent labels to get their music out (Stills had already signed to Crosby's old friend Chris Hillman's label Gold; Hill Records in 1991; Nash will sign with Artemis in 2002). Crosby, though, ended up on a label smaller than either of his colleagues with Sampson Records - the choice is an apt one given that 'almost cut my hair/hair is strength' connection, but it's still a low blow for an artist who at one stage was a given as one of rock and roll's most erudite and un-missably creative acts. To this day 'CPR', it's slightly lesser sequel 'Just Like Gravity' and two rather good live CPR sets are only available in Europe as pricey American imports, which given the ready availableness in our countries of, say, The Spice Girls, is 'the biggest crisis since the Abdication' (to quote from a rather daft Daily Mail headline everyone is taking the mickey out of the week I'm writing this; incidentally why don't the Daily Fail think World War Two was such a minor deal?) Even your humble scribe, a committed Crosby-phile who'll go through hell or high water to get his music (or at any rate sit through 'Whistling Down The Wire'), had to wait an awful long time without even seeing this album anywhere, never mind paying over the odds for it. While fans can, thankfully, hear many of the album's better songs on the 'Voyage' set this situation clearly can't go on; we demand a re-release as soon as possible because, well, time is the final currency you know and life is too short to not hear life lessons made with as much power and soul as here.

CSN fans also need to own this album because it contains two much older songs which pre-date the CPR concept. 'Rusty and Blue' is a beautiful song, an oh-so Crosby tale of trying to figure out what life is all about and being endlessly fascinated by how other people live their lives. The song had first appeared as early as 1994 and should by rights have appeared on 'After The Storm' although it's unusual jazz-style and lengthy solo-ing do have much more in common with this album (even so, it first appeared on the much-delayed live set 'It's All Coming Back To Me Now'). The other 'old' song dates back even further: 'Little Blind Fish' is the legendary outtake recorded by CSNY for 'Human Highway' (one of the few they got close to finishing before splitting up again) and for years so obscure that fans weren't even sure which of the quartet wrote it (as each of the four sing lines). We should have guessed from the quirky tunings and off-beat humour it was one of Crosby's, with metaphors of man as all sorts of lost animals, turned from a rocker into a jazz song thanks to some Jeff Pevar fine turning.

Elsewhere, notice how Crosby runs with the theme that dominated his set of songs for 'After The Storm' - a camera and its relationship to memory. David's dad Floyd was a cinematographer by trade and a good one too - he even got an award for his work on 1931 film 'Tabu'. Crosby grew up with big named from Hollywood turning up unannounced at his family house, especially those who worked behind the scenes, and for a time considered becoming an actor himself before his music took off. Two of these songs are directly related to the power of film: 'Morrison' shows how the technology can distort and disrupt, turning scared and lonely young men into heroes and poets (while Crosby's dislike of Morrison can and does come over in interviews, it's certainly fair to say that the Doors leader was never quite as self-confident and full of life as the Doors film and almost every documentary since his death in 1970 paints him out to be; Crosby's take on him as a 'mushroom' figure growing in the 'darker' side of life is much closer to the real Jim than the partying, social idolised creature of the film). And 'Somehow She Knew' shows how it can have the power to say the unsayable. Another song a tad older than the rest here, Crosby had been playing it with CSN where fans had come to know it as 'The Fisher King Song' in honour of the film that inspired it. Crosby, a great friend of the much missed Robin Williams, was eager to see the film premiere on TV simply because his pal was in it and he hadn't got a chance to see it at the cinema. A kind of 'King Midas In Reverse' for the movie world, it re-tells the Arthurian legend of the Fisher King who was put in charge of the holy grail but becomes so devoted to his task his health fails and he ends up dying and too impotent to pass on the role to any offspring. The film updates the story to a radio DJ played by Jeff Bridges who is horrified when a harmless comment on air sparks a mass murder and decides to help a homeless man played by Robin Williams on his own quest to find the holy grail through guilt that the man's wife had died in the same incident. The line that got Crosby comes right near the end, when Williams finds the grail and asks Bridges 'Is it alright now? Am I allowed to miss her?', revealing that the quest was really a cover up all along (the film was sad anyway but it's unbearably poignant now given the sad manner of William's own death). Scaring himself with how hard he was crying and his emotional connection with the film and not even quite sure why, Crosby was nursed back to full stability by his ever patient wife Jan, the 'someone' who 'knew'. I have to say I saw this film long before I ever heard the song and it never got me quite the same way (given the talent on offer - Terry Gilliam, the most talented Monty Python whose George Harrison-made 'Time Bandits' is one of the greatest film ever, wrote it - I was hoping for better), even with similar circumstances to Crosby's, but then I didn't have a close friend playing one of the lead roles and anyway that doesn't matter; what does matter is Crosby's emotional response and the letter he wrote off to Williams soon after telling him how powerful the work had been for him (if you're interested, there's a great audio clip on Youtube of Williams attempting to interview Crosby but forever interrupting himself, who can also been persuaded to play one of the pirates going 'arrrh'  a lot in another Williams' film, 'Hook').

Overall, then, 'CPR' is a great and most under-rated record, if perhaps not in the ways that CSN will naturally assume. There's only one rock song here to break up the mood, the performances tend to be sparse and a bit the samey (quite unlike Crosby's usual eclectic style) and the jazz piano chords and folk guitar tunings won't be to everybody's tastes. This is one of those Crosby albums where the melodies don't always do justice to the lyrics (which is odd as most recently he's had quite the different problem on albums such as 'Live It Up' 'A Thousand Roads' and 'After The Storm'); some reviewers put the blame on James Raymond but his own pair of songs are as melodic as any on the album so I doubt it's quite that simple. Poor James has a lot to do on this album, filling in both the instrumental sound and most of the harmonies (Jeff does sing a little, but not much): for the most part he does so admirably, more than mixing it with musicians either old enough to be his dad or who really is his dad; even so the harmonies are only at 95% of the lushness and perfection we come to associate with Crosby recordings (the pair are now at about 98% I'd say after an extra twenty odd years of working together). Jeff's guitar work too is often only here to add colour rather than fully embellish the sound - too often he's the third wheel in the band's sound, hidden by what his colleagues are up to and fitting bits in when he can (he's also no Stills when it comes to solo-ing or even a McGuinn, but then if you will work with the best people possible for three decades anyone is going to sound like a slight come-down). A few of the songs, James' 'One For Every Moment' and the joint 'Morrison' and 'Somebody Else' Town' aren't quite up to the staggeringly high standard of the other songs here, although that shows just how good the others are (and eight great songs out of eleven is still easily the best odds of any CSN-related release in years). 'CPR' isn't quite perfect then - and in many ways it needs to be, given that it cost about £20 to buy in the UK the last time I tried (it's currently £22 brand new on Amazon guys, sorry about that - I recommend you buy up the £13 secondhand copy quick, although do read the small print as it doesn't seem to be in very good condition I'm afraid!)

However 'CPR' is perfect in all the ways that matter: Crosby has rarely sung with such passion and you can hear his delight at finding something new to do after so many years of singing. His lyrics have rarely been as powerful - each one of his sets of words for this album sounds like a powerful, big statement - though the low-key rootsy music prevents this album sounding too big for its boots. James' intelligent yet warm piano playing is perfect for the new surroundings. The chance to hear so many songs CSN fans never thought we'd get to hear - and the fact that they're better than we ever dared hope - is a delight. The sheer bravery of these songs (which sound hard to write and even harder to live) that tap into the howling pain of fears and half-drowned memories is enough to applaud anyway even if they hadn't turned out as emotionally involving for the listener as they are. Unlike the past five Crosby releases in a row there's no horrid contemporary production set to forever imprison this record at the date of release; instead it's a timeless sound for an album on timeless themes that will still be important centuries and millennia from now (although fish may well have died out by then, blind or not, and our successors may well be clueless about The Doors film and assume Crosby is singing about the supermarket chain). Everything about this album has been thoughtfully made and tastefully created - even the cover is spot on (a centaur - half-beast, half-man who straddles the worlds of normality and terror - casually aims some arrows up at the sky, caring not where they land; 'arrows' are of course another key Crosby theme surprisingly not used on this album although the 'Live It Up' track 'Arrows' have them as a metaphor for the pain life shoots at you which only makes you stronger; this album's 'Time Is The Final Currency' also uses the metaphor of the tension between life and death being a 'hard-bent bow'). 'CPR' is a terrific album even by Crosby standards and it's such a shame that the band were no more after just one more ever-so-nearly-as-good album (though thankfully Raymond will be on board for the 'Crosby*Nash' record and will all but mastermind the 2014 album 'Croz').

'Morrison' is an apt choice, in the sense that it was the first song David and James wrote together. However it's an odd song for Crosby, who doesn't usually comment on his peers in such terms as this. Although his anger has quietened down by the time he came to perform the song, which is treated with the same laidback feel of the rest of the album, it was clearly originally quite an angry song ('I have seen the movie and it wasn't like that! He was lost and lonely, blind as a bat!') Whilst Jim Morrison was clearly not the party animal portrayed in the Oliver Stone film and Crosby's fear of 'the myth' coming to over-write the 'man' is a good theme for a song, you can't help but feel that there's a bit of atypical inverse snobbery about this song. Crosby and his ilk represents the sunshine, hippie ideals and hope - there's a danger that this lyric is looking down on Morrison simply because he represented the opposite, the dark and a world-weary pessimism that things were never going to get better. The song works best when Crosby sings about Morrison being 'too deaf to hear his own song' and believe in his own abilities and his opening admission that 'he was lost - and I don't think he wanted it that way' (in the film Jim does an awful lot of saving other people; in reality he struggled to save himself for as long as he did judging by most accounts). However the metaphor of Morrison as a 'gull blown inland on a stormy day' isn't really 'right' either (surely if Morrison was a bird he was a peacock) and the images of him 'lost in round one, spitting out pieces of his teeth' and 'lost in a Paris graveyard carrying his own wreath' do him as much of a disservice as the film (Morrison was clearly a self-destructive figure - you'd have thought that nine-lives Crosby would have identified with that aspect of him at least). All that said, this song at least started off with the right idea and the decision to make this a 'Crosby' sounding song rather than a poor Doors cover is a good one; this is after all about perception and has to be from the narrator's point of view. Raymond's jazzy melody is very different to Ray Manzarek's style on the Doors originals and very ear-catching, especially the very Nash-style singalong chorus.

'That House', however, is exceptional. Throughout the record there's the feeling that Crosby is getting things that have haunted him for a long time off his chest and 'That House' sounds like a distillation of all those darker times. As we've seen, the song was partly about an oft-recurring nightmare, but in another sense it's a sadder, darker re-write of Nash's 'House Of Broken Dreams'. The main character in the song starts out crying that it 'wasn't fair' although we never find out what isn't, the song turning from a weepie ballad via Pevar's best guitar on the album into an epic about struggle as the narrator leaves his 'prison cell' of a bedroom ('The sound leads to the kitchen, kitchen leads to the door). The song switches from first person to third person throughout as if Crosby can't even bear to believe that the sobbing figure in the song is him. While it's entirely possible the song dates from some dark day in Crosby's own life we don't know about (he had a particularly unhappy time in his teens he doesn't often talk about), it sounds more to me as if this song is written out of empathy with those who struggle to cope with life sometimes. There are shades of Brian Wilson in the lines about retreating inside yourself and a world of possibilities shrinking back to just one tiny room, although the ending is very Crosby, forcing himself through the impossible to get outside and back into the world again (turning 'one foot down in front of the other!' into the single hardest fought Crosby sentence since 'Where Will I Be?') So many Crosby songs are filled with 'sound' - usually music but quite often just the sound of living going on, but this track is clever for the way it starts off by conjuring up such eerie silence; in Crosby's world communication is the key to overcoming every problem both personal and universal, but in this song there isn't anything at the start except the brooding silence between two people who clearly don't love each other anymore. CPR at their best on this track too - the sudden swell of grief needs to be handled telepathically, little bit by little bit but both Pevar and Raymond 'get' this song and offer Crosby what he's looking for. The harmonies too are excellent, peaking at the sudden unexpected key change partway through (which could be so cheesy and Eurovision if handled wrong, but here simply increases the tension one more unbearable notch). An excellent start to the new band.

'One For Every Moment' is James' first solo song and it sounds like a poppier version of his dad's more usual jazzy tunings (its a singalong 'Deja Vu' without the mystery, this track). Given that James is a new found composer it's an impressive song all round and you can almost hear his dad's pride shine through as he tries to keep pace though a complex set of harmonic changes (getting a taste of his own medicine for what he used to put Stills and Nash through). Raymond's songs tend to be love songs and this early piece is no exception although it's a little more opaque and mystical than his later lyrics. Two lovers seem to be chasing each other without knowing it, him spying her running across 'barren land' before the wind 'tells her' she is loved and when the pair finally meet they spend the night underneath the stars 'one for every moment he would love her'. Though there's nothing concrete about this song at all (the words are as mutable as the slippery chord structure) there still manages to be something of a permanent feel about this song, with the sense that isn't just a crush built a lifelong romance that nature always intended. I could have done without the very 80s honking saxophone part (which is very 'Arrows', the closest song to this in the Crosby catalogue) but otherwise the performance is again excellent, a breathless rush of excitement suddenly peaking in some very CSN harmony holds in the chorus.

'At The Edge' is another majestic song, one that Crosby poured a lot of emotional investment in and is surely about his near-death experience. It's a song about the small grasp that human's have to life ('I wonder each day if I'm blowing away'), and how 'lucky' he feels. However the song is deeper than mere physical mortality - he was helped not just by a new liver but by the 'hand' of kindness, saving him from a 'very great fall'. The song is also his response to the sheer outpouring of grief and offers of support he discovered in his illness and that all his fears that he would fade away unloved and abandoned can be brushed aside now that he's had a 'dress rehearsal' for the 'real thing'. 'The darkness won't get you, your family won't go' he sings sadly yet joyously, realising that even at his lowest ebb there was reason to stay optimistic. The last verse is particularly strong, perhaps reflecyting all the thoughts whirling round Crosby's head on the operating theatre, the closest Crosby has ever come to answering his own youthful question 'what's happening?!?!?' back in the Byrds days and trying to understand what the purpose of life is. 'It's lie and it's dying, it's beginning and ends' he sighs, 'It's what did you do with the life they gave you?' Figuring that the whole point of life is to live it while leaving it better than you found it for other people, he adds 'it's were you that honest? Did you make amends? And how have you treated your friends?' While the words are credited to Crosby alone, the music is credited to all of CPR and is one of the best melodies on the album, sad and sorrowful yet with a resilient piano lick that keeps on coming back for more. The scat singing harmonies in the middle (on a very Crosby 'ba-bah!' wordless chant last heard on 'dancer' in 1976) are particularly lovely, Crosby and son suddenly taking off with a telepathic round of 'aaahs' that are truly beautiful. The result is one of the best Crosby songs in years another album highlight.

'Somebody Else's Town' is perhaps the weakest song on the album, without the individuality or originality of the best of the album and a 'funk strut' that seems out of place on such a humble, understated album. Still even this song doesn't fall that far: the lyric, about how there's more to be glad about in life than sad is very Crosby ('Blood is thicker than water, friendship is stronger than fear') has its moments, even if the story gets lost somewhere around verse two when James' narrator goes out for a long walk. Clearly suffering, he growls to himself not to feel so sad because he's been through worse down the years ('I'm no fucking kid!' he snarls, 'This is not my first war!') as he walks and walks, stamping out his anger and his depression at a turn of events in his life we never get to hear about. By the end calm is restored - he uses the hotel he's just checked into to call home and 'hear that soft sleepy voice' telling him that he's forgiven/they're sorry while he 'keeps them awake by the sound of my talking'. Another disaster has been averted, but oddly the song doesn't have the musical resolution we've been looking for; instead it just carries on as angry and stompy and as uncharacteristically atonal as anything Crosby has ever been involved with to date. James' lead vocal is excellent throughout but there's less call for harmonies here and adding the others to the mix dilutes the 'rawness' of the song a little too much to sock the message home. Still, if even the album low point can be this good you know that an album is very special indeed.

'Rusty and Blue' sounds as if it was always born for this album - it has the same haunting philosophical words, the same atonal jazz chords always taking the melody somewhere new and the till-now unusual Crosby trait of slowly building instead of switching gears mid-way through. 'Rusty and Blue' was, however, already a popular live Crosby song long before CPR were born, another instalment in his attempt to 'understand' what makes human beings tick. The lyrics are in the 'surreal' Crosby bracket (alongside 'Naked In The Rain' and 'Samuari') but make more sense than some, starting with the opening declaration 'how can I sweep these words into a cluster?' as if Crosby is struggling to form the images in his head into words. Visited by a man with 'the moon in his eyes' and a 'smiling woman who defeats fear with her eyes' ask him for advice but Crosby doesn't feel in a position to offer advice. The 'pillar' society has put him on 'is melting like ice' and even with all his living, even with the many years and borrowed lives he's had down the years he still doesn't feel as if he understand life anymore than when he started. All he has to show for his years of living is a collection of 'leaves and feathers' from his old lives discarded on the floor. However this wouldn't be a Crosby song without some good advice and a note of hope offered somewhere so Crosby digs deep for a 'sea shell or two' to bring up to the surface, although there's the hint that these are mere nuggets from his life's tales and that even these are buried, submerged by murky waters. After an epic instrumental - in which in a neat mirror of the lyrics James Raymond gets gradually further and further away from the starting point before the song finally finds it's way back home again - Crosby goes on to sing about how the good and bad are part of him and every human being. Adding that 'lives almost never run parallel' he sings about how all of our past living follows behind us 'like floorboards, all grained and worn', under our feet every time we do anything in our ordinary lives. At a full seven-and-a-half minutes this is one of the epics of the album and it's surreal, hazy, overtly jazzy quality won't be to the taste of every fan (Nash is clearly one of them though - his own equally strong 'Liar's Nightmare' from four years later is very similar to the feel of this song) but if you're able to follow Crosby down this road then this is a very satisfying song with some very Crosby imagery and a very beautiful tune, always shifting and always un-knowable.

'Somehow She Knew' is the other long song on the album - strange the two longest songs should be next to each other - but this song 'belongs' here, at the 'heart' of the album. Crosby starts the song by coming to after sobbing his heart out watching 'The Fisher King' and isn't quite sure what's just happened to him. Even now, in the comforting arms of his wife, he can see the 'shadow' that still haunts him so badly, 'the thing he was afraid would find him and wash him away in the tide', with the next wave of emotion and grief. All these years of mourning for his lost love of 27 years earlier (though Crosby wrote the song a little earlier than it appeared on album) and believing that the secret had kept safe locked up where it couldn't get him and still it found him in the end, triggered by one line in a film. Crosby relates the feeling to a 'wolf in a trap who chews off his own leg' - blocking out the grief and not facing up to it is a human coping mechanism, but it comes with a price of 'lying to myself' and fooling those around you into thinking that you're OK. Robin Williams was the 'man in the movie' who said 'is it alright if I miss her tonight?' (well, the actual line from the film is 'Is it alright? Can I miss her now?), the 'am' who 'felt just like me'. However, sad as this song is, haunting as both words and melody are and spine-chilling as the eerie harmonies are, this is not altogether a sad song. The narrator isn't alone and he's chosen his love ones carefully - he ends with admiration for his wife Jan as 'somehow she knew why I was crying', even though Crosby's conscious mind hadn't quite worked out yet just why he was creased up in tears. Crosby adds that 'a path she gently traced', pulling Crosby back from the point where he felt he couldn't function (he admitted in concert that he scared himself by how intense the feeling was) to the point where his grief and suffering could be properly cared for and missed. Opening with a flurry of notes that sound like a brain gone into hyperdrive before Crosby counts himself in, 'Somehow She Knew' is beautifully handled by all concerned, with one of David's greatest vocals in years (caught somewhere between the emotion of the moment and an icy-cold detachment that stops him from going over the top). Despite being a full seven minutes this song doesn't overstay its welcome for a second, the drama of the proceedings keeping the listener on the edge of their seat throughout as the song makes one eerie harmonic shift after another in a desperate search for dry land. Had 'CPR' only contained this one song it would still be a classic for many fans, with a song that's actually harmonically not that far removed from 'I'd Swear There Was Somebody There', Crosby's original wordless song of grief for Christine in 1971.

'Little Blind Fish' sounds a little out of place after two such intense songs, a bluesy re-write of what was originally more of a soul song from 1974. While I miss the lines that have been cut to make this once so glossy fish a more streamlined, functional creature ('Hold on it's coming, hold on boy...' 'Whose at the back door sitting at the front step? Whose at the wheel trying to bring the ship in? Whose in the cornfield looking like a scarecrow? Whose in the way on the broad highway?' The first and second verses were originally joined too with some linking material added to pad them out) this is still an excellent lyric and again very Crosby in its metaphors and quest for answers. The lyrics again reflect in Crosby's quest for the answers of life, picturing humans as 'blind' in a massive river (or later a 'massive box' or a bird up a 'massive tree') that they don't have the brains to comprehend. Pevar's slinky acoustic guitar riff, new for this version, is perhaps his best contribution to CPR of them all, a snaky slinky blues part that really suits the song and the slippery fish's journey into the unknown. The theme that mankind is in the middle of something he's too thick to understand - thus being like the 'dumb' animals he so scorns, while at the same time being a lot smaller than nature - is a very fitting Crosby lyric and one I'm surprised he hadn't returned to earlier. Crosby may have been reminded of the song after so long by the lines about the fox 'biting his own leg in a rage', so close to the metaphor of a wolf he used in 'Somehow She Knew', although ;like colleague Neil Young Crosby has never been averse to reviving old material.

'Yesterday's Child' is James' greatest moment on the album. While the music is credited to CPR as a whole, the lyric is James' alone and it's another case for how strong our genetics are as it's very like a song his dad would write. Modern man is arrogant, thinking that evolution has all been leading up to this moment and that he's at a peak. The narrator isn't so sure - he'd rather have been 'brought up by wolves' in centuries gone by and 'singing at the moon with my clan'. Far from being superstitious backwards peasants, James clearly sees mankind from centuries before as spiritual and at one with nature that modern mankind has forgotten. Another eerie chord sequence, like CSN in negative stalking the song ready to pounce instead of looking for an excuse to float away on a cloud, fits the lyric about mankind's arrogance becoming his undoing and finding that the world belongs to 'yesterday's child' after all (because it won't be around for 'tomorrow's man'). The result is another thoughtful song that's well crafted and beautifully performed, with an excellent Pevar solo in the middle, which only really loses out on the middle eight near the end (which after so much good work goes back to the lazy songwriter talk of 'dreams' and how 'dreaming makes light').

Coming oddly late on in the album is the record's only rock song 'It's All Coming Back To Me Now'. Though timid compared to the arrangement the band later played live, this slice of autobiography is nicely handled with Pevar clearly much more at home on a howling blues-rock hybrid and James manages to capture the 'aggrieved organ feel' of 'Long Time Gone' nicely. The lyric is very Crosby again, with several mentions of fan favourites along the way as he sings about his 'lost years' and assuming he would never find his way out of the darkness that once consumed his life ('Couldn't read my compass!' 'Life sometimes leaves me laughing!' Even the title sounds like a sequel to 'If Only I Could Remember My Name'). Recording that an 'oncoming train' of impending disaster (which could be in 1984 or 1994) made him 'snap into focus', Crosby throws every metaphor he can at this song to conjure up just how desperate he was feeling in the face of an addiction that couldn't be stopped ('A deer in the headlights' 'Like a pilot in a plane when it stalls'). Though clearly delivered as the 'joker' on the album and with a rare moment of hippie sunshine (as the song's chorus goes into harmony free-flow and soars skywards, being as impossible to ignore as the similar life-affirming part at the end of 'Country Girl') this is another serious autobiographical song about dark times which another, lesser artist would have turned into a sad ballad. Only a slightly lethargic performance lets the song down a little (it does sound much better live), although even this has its moments - the key change in the middle eight where Pevar turns his guitar note into the screech of a train's brakes is particularly on the money.

Against all odds, this fine album may yet have saved the best for last with a final moving song written about death or at least about coming back from the brink of death. 'Time Is The Final Currency' is one of the most powerful songs Crosby has ever written, about how  when you are dying time is more precious than anything, 'not money not power'. 'The time will come when you will give anything for one more hour' he warns us, adding that when death arrives so much of life seems petty and that 'there are no secrets' because you re-live so much of your life on your death-bed. Crosby no longer feels 'human' but more a 'spark of life' ready to join the great collection of sparks in the sky and feels the 'pressure' of a bow about to shoot him up to the sky. The song slowly falls back on the half-whispered line 'Suddenly you realise that this time it's alrightttttttt' letting the song pause on the word as if the fear is fading away. Later verses compare the threat of death with the glory of life, as Crosby 'watches the greatest miracle take three quarters of a year' - he's never seen one of his children growing before (James was of course given up for adoption, two more children were born to different girlfriends and Crosby also became a sperm donor for Melissa Etheridge). The waiting for birth seems very much like waiting for death, with the same 'hard bent bow' of tension linking the two worlds and the same verse is re-used, as 'another one is sent up to the sky and you realise that this time it's alrighttttttt'. A gorgeous contrast between birth and death written out of Crosby's unique circumstances of becoming a father at the point when he assumed he was going to die, this is another gorgeous Crosby ballad full of such wonder and ideas that you have think that 'Rusty and Blue' got it wrong and that Crosby really does know what is going on in life after all. A final fine performance from CPR, who are delicate and subtle throughout, is the perfect send-off to the album, although in keeping with the song the major colossal change you half-expect throughout the song never arrives, the song instead floating away on a hazy cloud.

Overall, then, 'CPR' is a major addition to the Crosby canon. While famous for pulling no punches this record is remarkable for how much it reveals about a songwriter we all thought we knew pretty well anyway and with so much going on in his life to inspire him is the start f a third wonderful burst of creativity that will last for the rest of the decade. While I'd have love to have heard what CSN might have done with this material (the best of this album and Graham's 'Songs For Survivors' would have made for a truly sublime LP), CPR are the right band for the material, teasing out a sound that's both as graphic and as powerful as the material whilst playing with a softer, jazzier tone than Crosby's day-band that suits the material nicely. Sadly low sales and the need to return to the CSNY family will kill off CPR's career before it properly began and a second, comparatively rushed album will be a tough ask to fill even for a newly invigorated Crosby. For now, though, CPR is the best idea Crosby's had in ever such a long while and enable him to make his best album in years, even decades. The arrows shot by CPR might not have all found their targets, as per the centaur on the cover, but so many of them do that it seems churlish to talk about the few that miss. Let's hope that this record and the next get re-issued soon: more fans need to know this material which is crucial to our understanding of one of the greatest songwriters of our times. 

A Now Complete List Of CSN/Y and Solo Articles Available To Read At Alan’s Album Archives:



'Crosby, Stills and Nash' (1969) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-29-crosby-stills-and-nash-1969.html

'Deja Vu' (CSNY) (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-34-crosby-stills-nash-and-young.html

‘Stephen Stills’ (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/stephen-stills-1970.html

'If Only I Could Remember My Name' (Crosby) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-45-david-crosby-if-only-i-could.html

'Songs For Beginners' (Nash) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-46-graham-nash-songs-for.html

'Stephen Stills II' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-48-stephen-stills-ii-1971.html

‘Graham Nash, David Crosby’ (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/graham-nash-david-crosby-1972.html

'Stephen Stills-Manassas'  (1972)http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-51-stephen-stillsmanassas-1972.html

'Wild Tales' (Nash) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/news-views-and-music-issue-75-graham.html

'Down The Road' (Stephen Stills/Manassas) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/stephen-stillsmanassas-down-by-road-1973.html

'Stills' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-65-stephen-stills-stills-1975.html

'Wind On The Water' (Crosby-Nash) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-67-crosby-nash-wind-on-water.html

'Illegal Stills' (Stills) (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/stephen-stills-illegal-stills-1976.html

'Whistling Down The Wire' (Crosby-Nash) (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/david-crosby-graham-nash-whistling-down.html

'Long May You Run' (Stills-Young) (1976) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/news-views-and-music-issue-33-stills.html

'CSN' (1977) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-70-crosby-stills-and-nash-csn.html

'Thoroughfare Gap' (Stills) (1978) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/stephen-stills-thoroughfare-gap-1978.html

'Earth and Sky' (Nash) (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/graham-nash-earth-and-sky-1980.html

'Daylight Again' (CSN) (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/news-views-and-music-issue-131-crosby.html

'Right By You' (Stills) (1984) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/stephen-stills-right-by-you-1984.html

'Innocent Eyes' (Nash) (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/01/graham-nash-innocent-eyes-1986.html

'American Dream' (CSNY) (1988) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-american.html

'Oh Yes I Can!' (Crosby) (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2016/07/david-crosby-oh-yes-i-can-1989.html

'Live It Up!' (CSN)  (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-viedws-and-music-issue-104-crosby.html

'Stephen Stills Alone' (1991) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.nl/2016/09/stephen-stills-alone-1991.html

'A Thousand Roads' (Crosby) (1993) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/02/david-crosby-thousand-roads-1993.html

‘After The Storm’ (CSN) (1994) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/the-final-review-crosby-stills-and-nash.html

'CPR' (Crosby Band) (1998) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/cpr-david-crosby-band-1998.html

'Looking Forward' (1999) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-looking.html

‘So Like Gravity (CPR, 2001) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/cpr-just-like-gravity-2001.html

‘Songs For Survivors’ (2002) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/graham-nash-songs-for-survivors-2002.html

'Crosby*Nash' (2004) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/news-views-and-music-issue-21-crosby.html

‘Man Alive’ (S) (2005) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/stephen-stills-man-alive-2005.html

'Deja Vu Live' (CD) (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/08/news-views-and-music-issue-1-crosby.html

'Deja Vu Live' (DVD) (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008_09_21_archive.html

'Reflections' (Graham Nash Box Set) (2009) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/news-views-and-music-issue-22-graham.html

'Demos' (CSN) (2009) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-41-crosby.html

'Manassas: Pieces' (2010) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/news-views-and-music-issue-52-manassas.html

‘Carry On’ (Stephen Stills Box Set) (2013) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/stephen-stills-carry-on-box-set-2013.html

'Croz' (Crosby) (2014) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/david-crosby-croz-2014album-review.html

'CSNY 74' (Recorded 1974 Released 2014) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/crosby-stills-nash-and-young-csny-74.html

'This Path Tonight' (Nash) (2016) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/graham-nash-this-path-tonight-2016.html

'Lighthouse' (Crosby) (2016) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/david-crosby-lighthouse-2016.html

‘Sky Trails’ (Crosby) (2017) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/david-crosby-sky-trails-2017.html

‘Here If You Listen’ (Crosby) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/10/david-crosby-and-friends-here-if-you.html

The Best Unreleased CSNY Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/csny-best-unreleased-tracks-news-views.html

Surviving TV Appearances (1969-2009) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/csny-surviving-tv-appearances-1969-09.html

Non-Album Recordings (1962-2009) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/crosby-stills-nash-and-sometimes-young_6.html

Live/Compilation/Rarities Albums Part One (1964-1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/crosby-stills-nash-and-sometimes-young.html

Live/Compilations/Rarities Albums Part Two (1982-2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/crosby-stills-nash-and-sometimes-young_20.html

Essay: The Superest Of Super Groups? https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/csny-essay-superest-of-super-groups.html

Five Landmark Concerts and Three Key Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/csny-five-landmark-concerts-and-three.html

Lindisfarne "Here Comes The Neighbourhood" (1998)

You can buy 'Passing Ghosts - The Alan's Album Archives Guide To The Music Of Lindisfarne' in e-book form by clicking here!

Lindisfarne "Here Comes The Neighbourhood" (1998)

Born At The Right Time/Ghost In Blue Suede Shoes/Jubilee Corner/Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong/Working My Way Back Home/Wejibileng/Unmarked Car/Devil Of The North/Uncle Henry/One Day/Driftin' Through

What do you do when your lead songwriter, second singer and main focal point dies suddenly? Do you carry on singing their songs in their memory? Or do you call it a day to respect their memory? Thankfully it's not a question we've had to ask too often on this site (the Grateful Dead are the only other band to have the same problem and they deice to carry on under another name) but it's the question at the heart of this, Lindisfarne's 13th album. Alan Hull died of a heart attack in 1995, just as he was gearing up to finish his fourth solo album after falling poorly at his old pal Rod Clement's 50th birthday party. The rest of the band were already fearing that after 25 years Hully might go it alone if his solo album 'Statues and Liberties' finally broke big and had already agreed to make a band album without him if they had to although Alan had talked big before about a solo career that never quite took off. Fair enough you think - Hully would undoubtedly have wanted the band to continue without him and was half-expecting them to when he split for his solo career anyway. But this decision was made all the harder because Lindisfarne had only recently lost two other founding members, losing lead singer Ray 'Jacka' Jackson to spend more time on his 'second career' as a marketing agent (sadly a job that earned him far more money than Lindisfarne had in the past decade) and lead guitarist Simon Cowe to run a Canadian brewery (long discussed as the 'dream job' for Lindisfarne members if the band ever fell apart!) That means that, in the space of just seven years, the band had lost all three of their singers and their 'front line', with just the rhythm section of bassist Rod Clements and drummer Ray Laidlaw left from the 'old' band. Compare this album back to back with last album 'Elvis Lives On The Moon' (an album dominated by Hull like no other, as if to fill in the gap of the missing Jacka and departing Cowe) and it's hard to believe that it's by the same band - because in many ways it wasn't.

As a result, 'Neighbourhood' and its sequel 'Promenade' now seem like something of an unwanted encore, played to an audience that had largely gone home and weren't at all sure if Lindisfarne should continue. It wasn't meant that way of course: the plan was that this would simply be a new chapter in Lindisfarne's long and winding history Lindisfarne and that the band would run and run into the 21st century. Certainly there's nothing on this album that suggests the band are close to the end or that this is a last roll of the dice. Lindisfarne had been a career and a life for so long that nobody wanted to let the band name die and they felt, rightly in my eyes, that the best tribute to the sad loss of Hull was to keep on playing his songs. They also did everything they could to make the transition easier, recruiting old friend Billy Mitchell as their new lead singer and backup guitarist instead of some new hotshot fans wouldn't know- a sensible choice as anyone whose read one of our 'Jack The Lad' reviews will know and who effectively becomes Hull's replacement a second time; the first was when Lindisfarne split in two in 1972, Hull and Jacka keeping the name and the 'rock' part of LIndisfarne's folk-rock while the other three - Rod, Si and Ray - took on the 'folk' half of the old band's 'folk-rock'. Having all that shared background history - and a similar Geordie accent - makes the leap from hearing Jacka's and Hully's voice that much easier. Sensibly Lindisfarne decided to draw on everyone's strengths for this album, going in a much folkier direction than anything made under the Lindisfarne name and making 'Neighbourhood' sound more like the fifth Jack The Lad album than the 13th Lindisfarne release (this line-up of the band does share 75% of its DNA with that band as opposed to just 50% of the line-up who'd made the 'Elvis' album) after all. Some fans loved and some fans hated the change, which is certainly pretty striking if you're listening to these albums in order: 'Dance Your Life Away' 'Amigos' and 'Elvis...' are the most commercial sounding Lindisfarne albums of them all, as dated in time as any AAA albums from the late 1980s and early 1990s and seem to have been made through gritted teeth to some extent, that wonderfully loose and ramshackle but exciting Lindisfarne sound dressed up to sound 'proper' and posh. 

While I'd have liked the band to have kept a bit more of their raw power for the 'Neighbourhood' record and a couple of electric tunes to shake up the 'feel' of the album wouldn't have gone amiss, I have to say that I love the 'new' acoustic sound of the 'Neighbourhood' record. Moving the band back to their folk roots gives this album an 'honest', maturer feel that the three records before it don't have and the three guitarists the band now have in the line-up have space to spar off each other which they would not have had with a more 'electric' sound (Billy, Rod - who hands over his bass duties for this record to new boy Ian Thomson to concentrate on his guitar - and Dave Denholm, the band's former guitar technician who had formally joined the group in the early 1990s but had yet to play on a Lindisfarne album; his presence here is particularly moving given that Hully thought of the younger guitarist as his 'protege' and Denholm in fact became Hull's son-in-law just before this album's release, marrying Alan's daughter Francesca - one of the little girls pictured on the inner sleeve of 'dad's first solo album 'Pipedream'). Many of the songs on this album are about aging and that's a theme that suits this record's folk ambience much better than if the band had pretended to be 'young' rock stars. 

However, this new sound is a huge step for the band to make - with a new lead writer (Clements), new lead singer (Mitchell), new bassist (Thomson) and a new lead guitarist (Denholm) to get used to. Hedging their bets, the band sensibly decided to release an EP of new material first: the rare but well received 'Blues From The Brothy' EP in 1997 (containing 'Coming Home To You Blues' 'Refugee Blues' 'Ardnamurchan Blues' and a re-recording of the band's first B-side 'Knacker's Yard Blues' which, despite the titles, are more folk than blues). The band also released a live album 'Untapped and Acoustic' the same year which became very popular among fans and threw in some rare material like 'Bring Down The Government' and 'Passing Ghosts' as well as Denholm's eerily similar take on Hull's 'United States Of Mind'. The response amongst long-term fans was positive and so the band decided to take the leap with a full album with the same 'feel'. The question now was whether this new direction was enough to sustain the band across a whole album.

For me the answer is a positive 'yes'. In fact 'Neighbourhood' is a much better album than the three records that came before it - the lack of commercial synthesiser trappings, new band members going in new directions and a sense of theme and unity across the 'Neighbourhood' record make Lindisfarne Mark (gulp - quick check with Wikipedia...) Nine (!) sound a lot more inspired than the Lindisfarne of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Without Hull around the band could easily have got one of their 'new' band members to write all the songs, but no: the band deservedly promote 'second songwriter' Rod Clements to being the new songwriting focus of the band and many of his songs for this album are among his best work (although it's still a shame that he gives up his distinctive bass playing in this period, preferring to 'fill in' Cowe's previous role as a guitarist and drafting in Ian Thomson effectively as 'his' replacement; good as Thomson is he's quite a different player to Rod and this album more than almost any other AAA album ever needs all the continuity it can get). Having one main songwriter for eight of the eleven tracks is something the band always used to do in the Alan Hull days and if you'd come to this album first you wouldn't necessarily realise that Rod wasn't the main focus in the 'old' bands, with a couple of credits per album at most to his name: more than anyone else this album is a triumph for Rod Clements and it's great to hear the musician get so much space to shape his ideas. Understandably, though, Rod is not the writer Alan was: there's none of the band's characteristic 'moral outrage' which had been such a part of Hull's writing: we often compare albums back to back on this site and it's especially notable if you listen to this album alongside 'Amigos' and 'Elvis Lives On The Moon', perhaps Hully's most overtly political set of lyrics delivered to the band (his songs on these twin albums are all about 'keeping the rage'). The band were probably right to ignore it - Rod isn't really a 'social' writer in the same sense that Alan was - and yet the loss of that side of the band still leaves a rather large hole in the centre of the record that even some strong Rod Clements songs can't fill.

In retrospect, though, I'm surprised there aren't more attempts on this album to link the band with their 'old' sound. We've already discussed Rod's characteristic bass playing, which is replaced by his guitar and fiddle-work and which appeared only occasionally on Lindisfarne records. Marty Craggs, who'd effectively become Jacka's replacement in the late 1980s and who fans had already got used to hearing, is badly underused on this album and reading between the lines may well have resented losing out on the chance to become the band's de facto lead singer (this is his last album with the band, although he stays with them till the year 2000). What's strange is that, just two records ago - on 1988's 'Amigos' - the saxophonist was writing more songs for the band than Rod was! Worse still, there are precious few harmonies here - the one thing that many people first think of when it comes to Lindisfarne (well, after foggy days on Tyneside and Paul Gascoigne trying to sing anyway) That's despite the fact that Billy, Marty and Dave's voices go together amazingly well seeing that the pair hadn't worked together before this album, Marty's blusier voice sounding fine against Billy's weathered folk drawl and Denholm's audible similarity to Alan Hull. Alternatively why is there not more overdubbing of vocals, which only really occurs on 'Driftin' Through' and sounds pretty impressive to my ears?)Stranger still there's only two mandolin parts on this record (on 'Jubilee Corner', the one song here that sounds a little like 'old' Lindisfarne and 'Driftin' Through'): yes Jacka was the band's main mandolin player but Rod is a pretty fine player too as listening to 'Jubilee Corner' will attest. I can understand why parts of this record sound so different, why Hull's rage, Jacka's pop and Cowe's electric guitar are missing, but why throw out all those other key Lindisfarne sounds too? No wonder so many fans were unsure what to think when this album came out: great as it sounds, with some of the best Lindisfarne songs and performances since at least 'Sleepless Nights' in 1982, it doesn't sound like Lindisfarne. A little tweaking, a couple of extra songs and a bit more harmonies and mandolins and Lindisfarne might still be running now (they called it a day in 2003). 

Still, if you can forget about what came before - a tall order I know - and have a penchant for acoustic folk then you'll still love much of this album (especially if you've always wondered what a more modern Jack The Lad album might sound like). What we're left with is still an interesting set of songs with more layers than normal for a late-period Lindisfarne album that are uniformly well performed and are produced and mixed particularly well for this period as late 1990s AAA albums go (oh the relief to return back to 'proper' guitars after the synth-hell that was 'Dance Your Life Away'!) The fact that Hull isn't around to dominate the vocals and writing credits means that Lindisfarne are more of a 'band' here than they'd been for a while: most of the recordings seem to revel in the chance of being able to play live and the sheer amount of instruments listed on the back cover hints at just what a wonderfully eclectic sound there is on this album (Rod alone plays 'dobro, electric slide, acoustic, mandolin and fiddle' whilst other band members play tin whistles, flute, accordion, banjo and jaw-harp). You certainly can't fault this album for effort and everyone impressively pulls together here in a way Lindisfarne hadn't needed to for years. The excellent 'Fog On The Tyne: Lindisfarne's Official History' by Dave Ian Hill is, naturally enough, a little over-excited by this album given that it was the one being made when the book came out but features a telling quote that all of the band who were involved at the time considered it to be like Lindisfarne's debut 'Nicely Out Of Tune', with everyone keen to be at their best and show off just what exactly the band can do to a sceptical and unsure audience. As a set of songs 'Neighbourhood' isn't quite up to that level and the lack of anything approaching Hull's nifty political awareness and outrage drops it down a level or two but the comparison is a good one: both are impressively consistent sets and the band are so well rehearsed and energised both albums sound like they had a lot of time and money spent on them, though in truth the band had very little of either. 

What's more I really enjoyed the theme of this album, which is growing old both gracefully and disgracefully. Lindisfarne's eldest members were hitting their 50s when this album was released and the fact that half the band are now a good ten years younger than the rest (Marty, Ian and Dave) seems to have been playing on the minds of the songwriters. Admittedly it's never set out, but I'd wager that the ghost of Alan Hull is in these lyrics too somewhere - the speed with which he died and how quickly lives can change or even end clearly playing on the minds of his colleagues and there are lots of lyrics here about trying to live your life right while you can, of how short time is and trying to return to what you know is best. Characteristically Rod doesn't reveal much of himself in his songs - not compared to Hully anyway who always wore his heart on his sleeve and in his songs - and all of his narrators in these songs are 'characters' similar to but not necessarily sharing 'his' viewpoint. Notably, his characters are all older now and looking back on their past, though they all have very different feelings whilst doing so: some of them enjoying life (the oil rig worker 'working my way back home'), some of them guilty about what they got wrong ('Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong'), some of watching life passing them by ('Jubilee Corner') and others desperate to escape the problems they face ('One Day'). Billy picks up on the mood by giving his own upbeat take on Rod's songs 'Born At The Right Time', just as he did on 'It's Jack The Lad', the only album the pair worked on together prior to this (Rod left Jack The Lad in 1974). Marty's song picks up on the theme of muddling through hard times in the hope of better ones and Dave's song (as opposed to his twin instrumentals) on the theme of unexpected life changes.  The most telling song, though, might well be Rod's 'The Ghost In Blue Suede Shoes' in which a musician nervously rehearses for his first show in a while, wondering if he's still got it and whether anyone will actually turn up before staring in a mirror and thinking 'not bad for 59' - a clear metaphor for Lindisfarne's position while making this album (in actual fact Rod would have been 51 at the time).

Another half-theme I picked up on - and the one thing on this album that's in keeping with what people 'expect' from Lindisfarne - is the amount of references to 'life oop North' on this album, something that hadn't actually been a part of the band's writing for some time (the band had spent more time writing about Russia and the collapse of the Iron Curtain on their recent records than Newcastle - the last 'Northern' song the band had written was Rod's 'Sunderland Boys' in 1982). Given that the band had had an unprecedented five years off between touring before making this album, it could be that they'd all ended up going back home for the first elongated period in years (and, unlike many bands, most of Lindisfarne did indeed have families somewhere around the Tyne). 'The Devil Of The North' is the most obvious reference and surely must have been inspired by Anthony Gormley's much-publicised statue 'The Angel Of The North' near to the Tyne and Wear, which was 'released' to the world in April 1998, just a couple of months before this album. Clements cleverly decided to salute a rather different side of Newcastle life - the charming 'salt of the earth' rebel with the heart of gold who knows what life in the city and district is really like (before ending the song by stating that we all have a 'little' of this devil inside us).  'Jubilee Corner' may also be a 'real' place in Newcastle (well, there's a 'Jubilee Road' in Gosforth, one of Newcastle's surrounding districts, which is kind of on a corner so that's good enough for me!) where aging life dropouts meet. The oil rig worker of 'Working My Way Back Home' sounds as if he's going back home to the 'North' too (the references to 'the wind and the cold' rather give it away!) while Rod's 'One Day' depicts a scene in the narrator's old home town meeting old friends - admittedly this could be set anywhere but I doubt I'm the first Lindisfarne fan to 'assume' that Newcastle is  the 'town' in the song!

Perhaps, too, the theme ties into the album's curious title (decided on at the absolute last minute - for a time this album was called 'Songs For Uncle Henry' after the moody instrumental track nine). Fittingly, Dave Denholm's cover - the first time one of the band had been involved with the artwork since Jacka made 'Jackpot' for Jack The Lad in 1976 - does indeed feature a 'neighbourhood', a cornucopia of colours and shades that could depict any town, with the countryside of the outer parts fading in to a dark and grey industrial complex in the centre (note the storm clouds overhead). The cover works best on the rear sleeve, where the band have hung it up on the wall as if it's a window, a reflection of everything going on 'outside'. Unusual for Lindisfarne, the cover doesn't quite work lacking the 'striking' look of many Lindisfarne covers  down the years (featuring the band variously in WW2 flying helmets, a dancing ballerina against a dark and foreboding sky and the eye-catching naked-waitress-with-strategically-placed-tray of 'Sleepless Nights'). The muted colours do successfully recreate the acoustic contents, but it's a shame that, say, a 'Jubilee Corner' or a 'Ghost in Blue Suede Shoes' aren't part of the cover! (there is an 'Unmarked Car' dead centre though!) One nice touch is bassist Ian Thomson's photographs on the inner sleeve of many of the instruments actually used during the making of this record - recalling the front cover of the first 'Jack The Lad' album (where the band proudly hold their guitars and fiddles aloft) and the lyrics of 'Ghost In Blue Suede Shoes', with a musician returning to the stage after so long away. 

Overall, then, 'Here Comes The Neighbourhood' is a generally impressive album. It's nice to hear the band older and seemingly wiser and the make full use of the chance to wipe the band's slate clean, offering up a whole new band sound that's folkier and more reflective than in the past. Not everything on the album works - two instrumentals on a record is at least one too many, the lack of harmonies are a shame and Marty in particular seems under-used, while a 'stepping stone' hybrid album towards this sound - with a couple of electric rockers - would have been an easier way all round of adjusting band and fans to this terribly new sound; yes  that was guitarist Si Cowe's special talent and he's missing now, but the last line up of Jack The Lad (featuring both Billy and drummer Ray Laidlaw) were as rocking as any band ever were and the closest song here - the glorious 'Unmarked Car' - hints at what the band might have done. Still, though, 'Neighbourhood' is a rather good and nicely mature album that might not have as many glorious moments as in the past but is an impressively consistent work, without a single weak spot. All the band chip in well, the new members taking to their roles with aplomb, while Billy sounds as if he's always been a part of this band (in many ways, of course, he was) and Rod's fulfils his obligations as the band's unwanted, unexpected de facto leader remarkably well. Certainly, the album deserved to do so much better - the closest the band came to having a hit from it was with 'Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong' and that was via a much-publicised but sadly small-selling cover as we shall see when we get to that very track. No, it's not a golden 'Lindisfarne' album, but given the circumstances 'Neighbourhood' is a remarkable achievement and deserved to be the start of a whole new book for the band, not the start of their last chapter. Yes you miss Jacka's distinctive edgy voice, Cowe's wonderfully eccentric lead guitar and backing vocals and there's a huge Alan Hull sized hole at this record's centre that even Billy Mitchell can't fill. But considering the circumstances, there isn't a lot more the band could have done to make this sound like proper 'Lindisfarne'. In short, the 'neighbourhood' isn't what it was back in the day when I was a lad and men were men and Lindisfarne were Lindisfarne, but you know what? It's a nice place to visit and I'm awfully glad this neighbourhood lasted a little bit longer so we could see it in all it's glory and true colours.

'Born At The Right Time' is - surprisingly perhaps - Billy's only song for the album and with the particular guitar tunings and Billy's earthy drawl is the most acoustic folky 'Jack The Lad' moment here (this must have been a shock to fans given that the last Lindisfarne track on album previous to this - 'Think' - was an angry snarling electric Alan Hull song which was in every way the ying to this song's laidback yang). The writer who once gave us 'Rocking Chair' - a song about a narrator with an empty life dreading the moment his children asks him to talk about his life and realising he has no stories no tell - is now semi-retired, free to do what he pleases and for now he's content to do nothing and take life easy. Starting off by feeling sorry for the youngsters of the town who have life hard ('kicking their heels and revving their wheels in search of a better time'), Mitchell points out that our 'fear' of growing old is often misplaced: life is much easier for him now he's no longer young and people expect less of him. The chorus runs with Mitchell's characteristic swagger, quickstepping rhythms not far removed from his 'Jack The Lad' song 'Trinidad' but this time the lazy beach holiday is at home, with days full of such delights as fishing and 'sleeping all day if I have a mind'. A sudden switch of key in the middle eight wishes that 'we'll all have better days', but proudly ends with the statement that missed opportunities don't bother him anyway: 'now is where I'm at' (this is such a contrast with 'Rockin' Chair', a song desperate to experience everything life has to offer). Lindisfarne turn in one of their better band performances of the period here too: Mitchell delivers a great vocal, revelling in the new cracks and strains in his voice (given that his last readily available recording was 22 years earlier in 1976 the cracks are noticeably there if you hear the recordings back-to-back; if anything Billy's voice sounds better in his 50s and the lived-in sound suits him), Craggs turns in a superb harmony vocal, Denholm's jangly guitar sounds just enough like Cowe's to maintain a link with the past and it 'feels' like the band are playing together, unlike the overdub fests on 'Dance Your Life Away' 'Amigos' and 'Elvis'. It might not sound much like Lindisfarne - perhaps the band might have been better off putting 'Devil Of The North' here first for nervous fans? - but it sounds mighty fine whoever it sounds like. Born at the right time indeed. 

'Ghost In Blue Suede Shoes' is the first of an unprecedented seven Rod Clements songs, like many on this album written in collaboration with Nigel Stonier, a producer-come-folk guitarist formerly of band Northern Sky. The song might have a folky flavour and Mitchell on lead vocal again, but it sounds noticeably more Lindisfarny thanks to Rod's pop sensibilities (you could easily imagine Jacka singing this on an early Lindisfarne album). The lyrics are some of Rod's cleverest, again reminding us of the narrator's age ('he's put his kids through college, he's worked and paid his dues') and given the circumstances this tale of an old rocker going back to the music he used to play in his youth before 'life' got in the way is particularly clever. The fact that he's a 'ghost' that the world doesn't see and who hasn't been playing music for years is sweet too. Listen out too for the closing lines, which transposes the character's age ('not bad for 59') with the date in the past ('The way it was in '59'), a clever touch even if it means that Rod can't be speaking about himself here (not for another eight years anyway). The fan-friendly line that, despite the long gap, 'those who still remember come dancing to the sound' is a rather nice nod of the head to the dedicated few who bought this record. However, the melody for the song isn't up to others on this record, being rather one-note for most of the song and the fact that there's very little change within the song (just a short middle eight, 'And those who still remember...') means that this lovely song isn't quite as memorable as others on this record. The band sound slightly unsure here too: this song doesn't suit Billy as well as some of Rod's other songs and the song needs Marty to join in with him sooner than just the short middle eight. Marty's harmonica playing also sounds slightly wrong here too, even though the mouthorgan has always been such a part of the 'band sound' thanks to Jacka's extraordinary playing down the years: here though it seems out of kilter with everything else, too heavy a touch for such a 'light' song. Still, though, the lyrics are clever enough to compensate for these short comings. That's Billy's son Scott playing piano on this track, by the way, the only 'guest' musician on the album (if relatives count as 'guests' anyway!)

My probable favourite song on the record is 'Jubilee Corner', though more for what I think it 'might' mean than what is there. In the narrative the 'corner' - which we guess is in Newcastle (see above) - has become notorious for people to hang out and observe the world (and who better to observe it than local son Alan Hull, one of the best observers in the business?) Rod's on record as saying that the song was written by his sub-conscious 'while I was trying to write something else' and isn't quite sure what the song means himself. For me, though, it can surely only mean one thing: the setting is a street 'in the middle of town' 'where the angels meet' and Rod's narrator is meeting someone on a 'corner' ('Meet Me On The Corner' is Rod's most famous song and his only 'hit' with Lindisfarne, with its narrator waiting to meet their loved one a metaphor for the promise of something exciting and enticing just out of sight round the corner in life). Could it be that Rod is meeting up with old pal Alan Hull here, imagining his old bandmate showing him round the afterlife? It's notably 'where the angels meet' after all and none of the people involved seem to be touched by the ravages of time or the must-haves of the modern world  where 'life' consists of 'stereo headphones' 'four-wheel drive' and 'mobile telephones' (a notably early reference to what will become the Western World's favourite irritating gadget in 1999). Alternatively is this set on Earth but has the narrator meeting a slightly older version of Hull's likeable loser from 'Fog On The Tyne' - one of the most Hull-like of all his many characters sharing the same dole-trapped background as Alan himself - still optimistically hanging around town waiting for something to happen.  Of course this could all be complete rubbish, but it's a nice thought for us fans to have, that our Hully came down to have one last drink and creative input into his old partner's subconscious. Another view is that - like many a Jack The Lad song  - the narrator is turning his back on a capitalist world for another one, full of real characters, loveable villains and rogues you just don't meet working in an office. The first verse has the narrator desperate to join in, the second has him turning his back on life to live there as a tramp figure with a 'worn out raincoat and a plastic bag' and the third denounces the modern consumerist society (Jubilee Corner even sits opposite a 'Benetton billboard'). And yet, 'Jubilee Corner' still sounds like it has an 'other-worldly feel', with an arrangement that manages to sound both 'earthly' and 'ethereal'. Written by Rod while trying to write a 'different' song for the album, could this song be his conscious and sub-consiousses meeting in the middle, as it were? Either way, 'Jubilee Corner' is one of the real high points on the album, with a driving guitar/mandolin  riff that's the most Linidisfarnish here on the album (and not that far removed from perhaps the most famous mandolin part of all - Jacka's break on Rod Stewart's Maggie Mae') and some clever ambiguous lyrics. Perhaps Rod's sub-conscious should write more songs like this one...

'Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong' is another clever song and the best known track on the album, thanks to a cover version by singer Erin Rocha that got one heck of a lot of airplay in the late 1990s but sadly wasn't quite the monster hit everyone was anticipating (the song peaked at #36 in the UK charts, which is better than this album managed but still a bit of a disappointment). The tale behind her cover is a fascinating one: Rocha was all of 16 years old and on 'work experience' in a Dorset recording studio when Rod got in touch with the premises, looking for a female singer to record a 'demo' of the song to pitch round to 'established' stars who might fancy having a go. The job would normally have gone to someone else but their usual singer was off sick that day and as it was only for a 'demo' a nervous Rocha agreed to have a go. As it happened, Clements liked her version so much he insisted it be released with her vocal instead and suddenly Erin was Radio 2's all too brief new 'discovery'. Lindisfarne's version is slower and less 'poppy' than the better known cover, with an emphasis on folk and a backing track of reedy guitars, tin whistle and bluesy bass (notably there are no drums on this version). Lyrically this is another clever song (written by Rod with Nigel Stonier again) and unusual for Clements who tends to keep his emotions out of his songs. Like 'The Things I Should Have Said' off 'Nicely Out Of Tune', however, this song is about a character who feels lots of emotion but has trouble expressing it and who always seems to say the wrong things whenever he wants to comfort his partner. A common theme for a song then, but Clement's song sounds particularly heartfelt, with a melody full of helpless misery that won't 'settle' on a proper root chord in fear of saying the wrong thing, musically hopping from one leg to the other in frustration. Lyrically the song is a strong one too, all too believable with its exaggerated politeness ('If I should have a mind to say...') and the repeated AAAB rhyming structure, as if the narrator simply won't let the idea go. In short, there's a whole story going on here that you sense doesn't stop when the singing does, which is the sign of a well written song. In fact the song is so good at conveying so much emotion whilst actually saying very little that I feel like I'm going over old ground, having 'covered' this song as part of my A-level English Language coursework in 'unusual expressions of love in music' (along with 10cc's 'SSSSilly Love' and a bunch of less interesting songs by lesser artists that sadly I had to cover - I got a 'B' if you're interested and lost most of my marks for running way over the word count; some things never change!) Another of the album highlights, 'Can't Do Right For Doing Wrong' is certainly more 'right' than 'wrong', although I have to say that the expressive, emotional Mitchell has bigger problems trying to get Rod's detached, expressionless character across than other songs on the album. 

'Working My Way Back Home' is a Clements and Stonier song written in collaboration with Liverpudlian songwriter Jimmy Barrett, who'd worked with the band on the 'Elvis' album. A jolly tale of an oil rigger coming back home after a long time away, it's more like a song from the 'Amigos' album, with a working class narrator so desperate for work he's prepared to go miles away from home to earn money for the family he never sees. The track has a more positive slant though, more like the songs on this album and 'Fog On The Tyne', with the emphasis on the character's joy at being able to put all the hard work behind him and return home, even if  technically speaking he's been laid off and is worrying about where his next pay cheque will come from. Whether intended or not, there's a definite parallel with Lindisfarne's perhaps third most famous song 'Run Form Home', from their reunion album 'Back and Fourth' in 1978, with home a similar haven of peace and tranquillity after a hard time away. This song is earthier, though, and is more about the hard life the narrator is leaving behind than what he's 'running' towards. There's a surprisingly technical bit of detail in the middle eight ('Traxcavator, rubber duck, JCB') that sounds a bit of a mouthful, but otherwise this is another clever bit of  character observation from Clements and co. The song is born for Marty Cragg's, err, 'craggier' vocal for lack of a better word, the saxophone player bringing out the gruff working class bravado in the song and doubling up with some fine harmonica playing. Bassist Ian Thomson plays a 'jaw's harp' here too, making for a nicely unusual setting for Lindisfarne. However the song doesn't have quite the emotional weight of others on the album and soundwise is a bit anonymous trapped between two such excellent songs.

'Wejibileng' is a 75 second long fragment of an instrumental by Dave Denholm that previews the melody-line from his own 'Unmarked Car' next on the album. If anything it's even more beautiful than the song to come, with a glorious slow tune full of melancholy and regret that's marked out by Denholm's piano playing, Ray's soft rattled percussion and Marty's glorious flute.  The sound is an unusual one for Lindisfarne, more like something their contemporaries Capercaillie would do and has a real 'celtic' feel about it that fits the band's sound. That said, it's hard to really get to grips with an instrumental this short and the fact that there's both a song based around the same chords and a second instrumental on the same album does make you question whether it should have been turned into something more. The gibberish title seems odd too - no explanation is given and, in fact, this songs seem to have been a last minute addition to the album (while listed on the back of the box this song isn't listed on the rear sleeve). Could it be that this song was taken from an earlier arrangement of 'Unmarked Car', a song that by the band's own admission took them an awful long time (and several re-arrangements) to get right? If so, is there a full take of 'Unmarked Car' in the vaults somewhere treated like this?                                 

All that effort spent on 'Unmarked Car' was worth it, though: quietly brooding and sinister despite some vague lyrics and built on a marvellously dark and asymmetrical riff, this is certainly one of the more striking songs on the album. Denholm wrote the song with Clements and Stonier's help and it's his first credit on a Lindisfarne record as well as his first vocal for the band. The cleverness of the song is the way it builds up such an eerie atmosphere from so little: as much as the narrator drops in lines like 'vigilante' and 'desert wells burning', he never actually gets his hands dirty and is actually watching out for other people doing things they shouldn't be doing. In truth he could be a car park attendant for all we know and for all he does in the song.  The feeling, though, is that he's so much more than that - an unseen force, watching over us, waiting for us to do wrong; the devil if you will. The fact that the man is in an 'unmarked car' sounds terribly menacing in context, as if he's above the law, but of course all it really means is that there's nothing written on his vehicle. This is such an unusual sound for Lindisfarne and almost all of the familiar elements (the vocals, the harmonies, the guitar and the 'feel') are missing, so it's no surprise that so many fans have commented that this track feels somehow 'separate' compared to the other recordings here; no wonder too that it took such a long time to get right. However it's a shame that Lindisfarne didn't try more dark and dangerous songs like this one because they get this recording spot-on: bass heavy and murky, with no less than three guitarists (Rod, Billy and Dave) doubling Ian's bass part and some more excellent flute playing from Marty over the top. The single most adventurous Lindisfarne song since 'Good To Be Here?' in 1979, Alan Hull would surely have been proud of what his son-in-law and bandmates came up with. 

'Devil Of The North' is a bit of light relief after such intensity from Clements and Stonier, a comedy song celebrating the 'real' spirit of Newcastle following the erection of an angelic statue with big arms that seemed to be endlessly in the news back in 1998 (which always looked like an anaemic Mr Tickle cast in bronze to me). The opening lines of the lyric make it clear that they're celebrating something 'real' here: 'He ain't made out of iron, he ain't made of steel, he's no work of art but he sure as hell is real'. The Devil of the north might be on the wrong side of the law at times but he's always on the side of Newcastle's people, championing the under-dog being beaten by 'the man', causing strikes when working conditions get too bad, tricking the rent collector out of taking some poor hard bitten family's savings and even when Newcastle United score against rivals Sunderland. As much of a shadow as the 'Unmarked Car' driver, this spirit is out for good, but on his terms. A clever catchy chrorus ('Shout it from the pulpit, bang it on a drum, call for your mama but she ain't gonna come!') makes for a memorable song and Billy and Marty sound good again together here, with Mitchell especially revelling in a song that's so similar to his own style of writing (this could easily have been a mid 70s Jack The Lad number).  Not as deep as some other songs on the album, perhaps, but still welcome.

'Uncle Henry' is a curious instrumental from Denholm that's positively Fairport Convention. A slow, stately gallop through a melody that sounds as if it does date back to time immemorial, it just about succeeds thanks to some sensitive playing from Denholm's lead guitar, Rod's acoustic and Ian's rumbling Pentangle-like bass. The song's curious title comes from producer Sid Griffin, who thought that the tune reminded a little of 'my Uncle Henry' - who on the basis of the music must have been a slow, steady but rather emotional and mournful relative in his later years. While well played and with a lovely yearning melody that successfully expresses melancholy (was this song originally a lament for Alan Hull?), you have to question whether this song belongs on a Lindisfarne album - given that Rod never played much guitar before this album there's nothing here to link this sound with what fans would have known and loved - and it's not quite  up to the standards of the rest of the album, sound9ng a little too much like something from a  film score than a bona fide 'song'. For a time the album was known as 'Songs from Uncle Henry' in deference to this song - as well as some other fun names: 'Breakfast In Bedlam' 'North by North East' 'Ghost to Ghost' (ouch - the band' worst pun since 'Back and Fouth') and best of all 'Senile Delinquence' , a title that sums up the album well even if the band were probably right to drop it when they realised what fun sarcastic reviewers like me would have with it!

'One Day' is another album highlight, the last song on the album from the pen of Rod and Dave along with Nigel Stonier. Simple as it is, this song is really effective and emotional, really tugging at the heart strings with its desperate belief in better times around the corner. The song starts with the narrator meeting an 'old friend' he hadn't seen in years and realising how the decades have changed him, being 'cold and underfed' before a second verse reflects on a lost love with a 'lost look in her eye', who never married the man of her dreams and whose life never quite turned out the way she wanted it to. A final verse then finds the narrator, like the one on the Beatles' 'In My Life', walking back through places from his youth and remarking on the differences between then and now, in himself as much as his surroundings. Gorgeously full of melancholia, the characters all dream of a happiness which they secretly know they will probably never have and yet there's nothing sarcastic or vengeful in the song's many repeats of the chorus wishing for brighter days. A very Ray Davies track, split between short term pessimism and long term optimism, it's a marvellous piece of writing and all too easy to identify with. The aching, yearning melody is gorgeous too, sounding 'trapped' on one or two notes for the verse before suddenly flowering into a full octave range on the chorus, finally free to become all the things it always wanted to be. Rod should have sent this song to be 'demoed' as well as 'Can't Do Right' - both songs are clearly by far and away the best on the album and unusually emotional for such a normally controlled writer. Billy does the song proud too, positively launching into the final verse and the band turn in another fine performance. One day songs like this one will become famous the world over, in another space and time, one day...

The album ends with Marty's only song on the album, 'Driftin' Through', which picks up on many of the same themes. Sadly the song  - a paean to the fact that every human being has troubles to overcome and no clear plan on how to resolve the issues they face - isn't quite as strong and the band might have been better to switch the two songs around on the album. The most Hull-like song on the album, a sprightly verse about leaving your troubles behind can't quite cover up a feeling of helplessness at this song's core ('Driftin' Through, Ah it's the best that we can do') or a feeling that without much melody to go on the band themselves are rather 'drifting through'. Marty delivers another strong vocal, however, on an album on which he's badly underused and he turns in some more fine harmonica work too. The song isn't a bad one, then, but it does need a little something extra to keep it interesting and runs out of steam long before the ends of its 5:30 running time. The best moment, though, might be left to last with Marty's accordion and Rod's mandolin setting out for a duet-ted jig that gradually takes over as the rest of the band stop playing one by one - a device that sounds corny on paper but is highly effective on record (giving the impression of the narrator carrying on with his life regardless of his surroundings). 

Overall, then, 'Here Comes The Neighbourhood' is a special album from a band who seem to know that their best days are behind them but still have so much to say that they have to keep going. It's no 'Nicely Out Of Tune or 'Fog On The Tyne' and wouldn't give even 'Dingly Dell' many 'Sleepless Nights' (or 'Sleepless Nights' any 'Dingly Dells'!) but it's an articulate, often powerful album from a band with a special maturer vibe all of its own. No one could ever fill Alan Hull's shoes and the fact that before his death the band had also lost band members Jacka and Si to quite different careers is a great shame. But sensibly this line-up of Lindisfarne doesn't try to replace anybody: all the band members do what they were good at doing before joining the band and much as he might have hated the spotlight this album gave him, the chance to hear more songs than ever before from Lindisfarne's quiet bass player is a definite plus for this album. The bad news is that this album doesn't sound much like Lindisfarne, re-setting too many buttons at once when a few nods to the old sound might have been needed. The good news is that the 'new' sound on display here isn't the cul-de-sac so many people took it to be but a truly marvellous sound in its own right. As anyone whose ever moved house will have found, being in such a new 'Neighbourhood' is at first overwhelming and odd, but by turns slowly becomes more beautiful and more like 'home' the more you get to know it. Given more time to get used to the new surroundings Lindisfarne might yet have provided the best scenery of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but even passing through it's easy to recognise the beauty of the landscape and care with which the residents have cared for their surroundings. Overall rating - 6/10.

A NOW COMPLETE LIST OF LINDISFARNE ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:

'Nicely Out Of Tune' (L) (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-37-lindisfarne-nicely-out-of.html

'Fog On The Tyne' (L) (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-88.html

'Dingly Dell' (L) (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/news-views-and-music-issue-146.html

'Roll ON Ruby' (L) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/lindisfarne-roll-on-ruby-1973.html 

'It's Jack The Lad' (JTL) (1973) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-61-jack-lad-its-jack-lad-1973.html

'Happy Daze' (L) (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/news-views-and-music-issue-50.html

'Pipedream'  (AH) (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/news-views-and-music-issue-63-alan-hull.html

'The Squire' (AH) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/alan-hull-squire-1975.html

'The Old Straight Track' (JTL) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/news-views-and-music-issue-109-jack-lad.html

'Rough Diamonds' (JTL) (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/jack-lad-rough-diamonds-1975.html

‘Jackpot’ (JTL) (1976) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/jack-lad-jackpot-1976.html

'Magic In The Air' (L) (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/news-views-and-music-issue-15.html

'Back and Fourth' (L) (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/lindisfarne-back-and-fourth-1978.html

‘The News’(L) (1979) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/lindisfarne-news-1979.html

'Sleepless Nights' (L) (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-83-lindisfarne-sleepless-nights.html

'Dance Your Life Away' (L) (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2017/01/lindisfarne-dance-your-life-away-1986.html

‘Amigos’ (1989) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/lindisfarne-amigos-1989.html

'Elvis Lives On The Moon' (L) (1993) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/lindisfarne-elvis-lives-on-moon-1993.html

'Here Comes The Neighbourhood' (1998) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lindisfarne-here-comes-neighbourhood.html

'Promenade' (2002) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/lindisfarne-promenade-2002.html

Si Cowe Obituary and Tribute (2015) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/simon-si-cowe-lindisfarne-guitarist.html

Surviving TV Clips http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/surviving-lindisfarne-tv-clips-1971-1996.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part One 1970-1987 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/lindisfarne-sololiveraritiescompilation.html

Live/Solo/Compilation Albums Part Two 1988-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/lindisfarne-sololiveraritiescompilation_29.html

Essay: Keepin’ The Rage On Behalf Of The Working Classes https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/lindisfarne-essay-keepin-rage-on-behalf.html