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Reviews:

1. Earth Apples

Subtitled “Old and New Potatoes”, this collection features Bernie’s forays into the studio in the past twelve months. The songs, however, span his entire career: alongside recent compositions like Farewell, Rose Of The Valley and I’m Still Crying are songs which reach back to the earliest days of his career. Yallery’s Way and The Goblin’s Riddle predate his first album (both were written in 1973). Time Stands Still In London became a live favourite in the late seventies; it is released here for the first time in a fully realised version. I felt a personal rush of nostalgia on hearing Sitting In A Train, written in 1984 for a radio documentary which I produced.

The set could be read as musical diary of Bernie’s life in music – several songs, for example, reflect his travels. While he may never have matched the peregrinations of his hero Davey (see Sailing To The Moon), herein he takes us to Wales and Lincolnshire, London and the North East, Southern Spain (standing in, spaghetti-western style, for Mexico) and the United States. The last takes the form of two fine recent songs – Not Fooling Anyone, inspired by a portrait hanging in the room where he was playing a house concert, and Massachusetts Jon, a gentle tribute to a kindred spirit and fellow singer-songwriter.

The album is self-produced, and its rich texturing and use of stereo demonstrate how much his skills as a producer have developed. Naturally, the instrumentation features Bernie’s guitars and trademark multitracked vocals; more surprising is his extensive use of keyboards. and rhythm tracks.

It’s Bernie’s “where-I-am-now and how-I-got-here” album.

Nigel Schofield

2.

Interpretations (Free accompanying CD)

This album is a companion-piece to Bernie’s new album of original songs. Recorded during the same sessions, it’s a collection of the 12 songs (Beatles excepted) which have influenced him most – the subtitle “Songs I Wish I’d Written” sums it up. Bernie has released the album as a freebie, which is offered free with the purchase of any of his albums. This seems dismissive of a set which includes some of the best vocals he has ever put down – his version of Witch Of The Westmorelands is a gem. Archie Fisher’s song is in good company with classics by other writers working within the tradition (Cyril Tawney, Jon Connolly, The Incredible String Band), plus a baroque take on Lord Franklin.

American influences are represented by three Dylan songs, Richard Farina’s Be Not Too Hard, and Utah Philips’ Goodnight Loving Trail.

They may be songs he wishes he’d written, on this set he makes them his own.

Nigel Schofield

3. Earth Apples & Interpretations (Free accompanying CD)

It’s always good to hear from Bernie again – you can always rely on him to come up with something worthwhile and interesting – and now in he breezes with not one new album but two! The only slight catch (but hey, it’s no disadvantage really!) is that you can only get the second one, Interpretations, as a buy-one-get-one-free offer when buying another of his albums – ideally, of course, Earth Apples!… Which is like a rich tapestry of Bernie’s life both past and present, and in many ways an ideal introduction to his special craft. It gathers together songs spanning his entire career to date, and firmly puts the spotlight on the consistency of Bernie’s lyrical and melodic invention over close on 35 years, and the distinctiveness of his writing style and performing voice (the hallmarks of any defiantly individual talent). Although there are occasional traces of influence from other writers working within the tradition (examples of whose material occur on the Interpretations album), you could never accuse Bernie of being the slightest bit derivative; for Bernie’s songs still sound like no-one else’s.

Old And New Potatoes is the canny subtitle for the Earth Apples album, conveying the nature of the tasty produce to be found within as well as its varied temporal vintage. I suppose you might say that the two songs dating from 1973 (The Goblin’s Riddle and Yallery’s Way) are the most overtly “folky” of the 13 songs on the disc, although the tale of The Sailor’s Earring (1992) and Farewell, Rose Of The Valley (written only this year) both have a classic folk feel too and the latter, like several others on the disc, comes complete with a memorable singalong-if-you-re-so-inclined chorus. Bernie says that the older songs had never made it onto the contemporaneous albums simply because there was insufficient recording space – certainly it’s not an issue of quality, for there are plenty of fine songs here that I’m pleased have finally seen the light of (recording) day, and I’d go as far as to say that some, like Not Fooling Anyone, may well rank amongst the finest he’s written.

By dint of a virtual travelogue, the songs form a catalogue of Bernie’s ramblings, also enjoying a stylistic versatility: from the Soho troubadour-like Time Stands Still In London through the somewhat Beatlesque Those Days Are Over and the affectionate and honest portraits in Massachusetts Jon and He’s A Rough Diamond, to the Lincolnshire landscape of Yallery’s Way. Perhaps the biggest surprise here (for those who know Bernie’s previous work, at any rate) will be his extensive use of instrumental and vocal augmentation of his basic trademark highly skilled guitar-and-vocal: the additional richness of texture, which is down to an attractive, inventive and genuinely creative use of keyboard “voices” and rhythms and “real” vocal harmonies (all Bernie’s own), goes beyond mere cosmetic embellishment and in the majority of cases develops, and really enhances, the essence of the songs.

I might say the same of the Interpretations (bonus) album, which is subtitled Songs I Wish I’d Written, and unlike many a songwriter’s album of “mere covers”, deserves to be assessed (and issued) in its own right, for it’s a sincere and credible release on which Bernie sets his own individual stamp on songs which clearly mean a lot to him. The pick of these are inevitably those which have inspired me also: October Song and Painting Box from the ISB, the earlier brace from the three Dylan songs (Mr. Tambourine Man and Love Minus Zero), Archie Fisher’s epic Witch Of The Westmorelands, two by Cyril Tawney, and even Utah Phillips’ enigmatic yet image-rich Goodnight-Loving Trail.

Bernie’s every right to be proud of these two new CDs, and although he’s indicated that his songwriting well may have run dry this “man of the earthy integrity” still has plenty of creativity left in him, not least in terms of skilful musical arrangement, production and – judging from the potent cover illustration for Earth Apples – as an artist.

David Kidman