Sunday 22 April 2012

Ghost of Song: Reviews: Properganda

Properganda: Issue 22
March/April 2012


Jones (aka Trevor Jones of Miracle Mile) released two albums that dared to mix spoken verse and songs, a surprisingly successful ploy that made both Hopeland and Keepers richly rewarding.
Both seemed to tell a story, or at least lay out an emotional landscape, the former’s optimism and the latter’s loss, that held a looking glass to our hopes and fears.
As always, Trevor crafted beautiful songs, delicate, tender, literate and bathed in melodies that make the hairs on the back of the neck stand proud and can bring a lump to the throat. Realising that not everyone could make the stylistic leap, 10 of them are presented on Ghost Of Song, an economical 40 minutes of perfectly judged, sweet melancholy.
In a just world a revisit wouldn’t be necessary, but then I Deny, Something Resembling Love, To Tell You The Truth and My Last And Latest Chance need to be heard, as does every song offered here. With musical foil Marcus Cliffe providing thoughtful arrangement from the intimate to the orchestral, these are pearls born of grit but with opalescent shimmer and deep lustre. If this is what it takes for these songs to be heard then make it so.

Simon Holland

1 comment:

  1. I, of course have & love the album. To find a way to describe it I looked up 'sublime' in the thesaurus and it said...
    exalted, elevated, noble, lofty, awe-inspiring, majestic, magnificent, glorious, superb, wonderful, marvelous, splendid; informal fantastic, fabulous, terrific, heavenly, divine, out of this world.
    I thought... yep that just about sums it up!
    xxx

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