Claire Hamill - One House Left Standing

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Claire Hamill - One House Left Standing; Claire Hamill - One House Left Standing
Topic Started: Jun 2 2008, 01:51 PM (270 Views)
zeitgeist	Jun 2 2008, 01:51 PM Post #1
Administrator Posts: 4,015 Group: Admin Member #1 Joined: November 5, 2005	Claire Hamill - One House Left Standing Baseball Blues’, the opener was familiar to me from ‘The Minor Fall, The Major Lift’, a double CD compilation of Claire’s career. It goes out with a stirring trad jazz cameo by the Alex Welsh band that never ceases to amuse or amaze! Watch out for the duff note on the clarinet pointed out by Claire in the liner notes to this Esoteric 24-bit remaster. 17 years old and just out of school, with a recording contract with Island Records under one arm, writing songs with her boyfriend of the times Mike Coles, Claire’s debut won lots of critical acclaim but not a great deal of commercial success which is perhaps hardly fair considering the maturity of the lyrics and precise musical arrangements backed by budding ‘stars’ in their own right like John Martyn whose guitar graces ‘Baseball Blues’ and the well observed ‘The Man Who Cannot See Tomorrows’ Sunshine’. The latter also features cello by Paul Buckmaster. It is on the 4:30 of ‘The River Song’ with its pretty piano/flute interface that the Hamill/ Coles song writing partnership emerges as a real force. Again the orchestration is quite beautiful. Claire picks an acoustic guitar on ‘Where Are Your Smiles At?’ and again the musical palette is wide with accordion, French Horn and oboe all contributing to this particular number. The second side of the original LP started with ‘When I Was A Child’, a clever, wistful song about the transition between childhood and adulthood. There’s a 6:45 cover of Joni Mitchell (obviously a big influence) with ‘Urge For Going’ (as far as I am aware in 1971 not yet released by Joni, turning up as the b-side of ‘You Turn Me On, I’m A Radio’ in Nov, 1972) where Claire is backed by Kirke, Tetsu and Rabbit. The variety of instrumentation is a remarkable feature of this album and Claire even plays pipe organ on the tragi-comedy of ‘Flowers for Grandma’, a variation of ‘Pop Goes The Weasel’! There’s one solo number ‘The Phoenix’, as introspective as the joyous closer country hoedown ‘Smile Your Blues Away’ with its banjo, fiddle and double bass is extroverted. There are also two bonus tracks: the previously unreleased ‘Meet Me On The Corner’ (Yes, the Lindisfarne number!) with Gerry Rafferty and Steeler’s Wheel and the single b-side ‘Alice on the Streets of Darlington’. (Reviewed by Phil Jackson) Buy from Amazon


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