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“I can feel very helpless and very hopeful about the world at different times, and I think this new album captures that”, says Sean Taylor about his fifteenth album, The End of The Rainbow, and the second with Ben Walker on production duties (and guitars, rounding out the band alongside Mike Seal on bass and drummer Paulina Szczepaniak). It’s a pretty apt description of the album’s mood swings, lyrically and musically, as it seesaws between hope and despair in its contemplation of the UK and the world in general. It kicks off, though, in upbeat style with Berlin, a bluesily picked song in celebration of a week spent in the city soaking up its energy, references taking everything from Goditzer Park, East Side Gallery, Tiergarten to Pilsner and Tempelhof barbecues as he declares “Berlin always tastes like more”.
And yet, amid this there’s an early shadow casting its pall in the line “refugee camps looking on”, the darkness opening up on the Stonesy swagger and wailing harmonica of the train to hell imagery Eternal Damnation from whence the album title comes as, mentioning Moses and Galilee, it talks of how “there ain’t no kind of fire without no kind of smoke”, and that “at the end of the rainbow ain’t a pot of gold”. Even so, “we gotta carry on”, as he does on the intimately sung, stark piano-led relationships-themed Invitation with Brian Standeefer on cello as, capturing the dark and light that form them, he bids “come to be in celebration/Come to me in pain/Come to me in sunshine/Come to me in rain”, pleading “don’t change a thing/Your imperfections/Make you perfect”.
Errol Linton harmonica, Justin Carroll on Hammond and Donna Edmead providing backing, the first of the most politically potent state of the nation numbers comes with the loping electric blues 2024 where “The queue for the foodbank/Curls around the block/Prices keep on rising/They’re never gonna stop… The schools are falling down/There is sewage in the sea/Everywhere you turn” as he asks “Which killer gets you horny?/Which dictator turns you on?/Is your idea of freedom/Sucking on the barrel of the gun…How can you find a shelter/When you can’t afford the rent/When the future is a nightmare/And you’re living in a tent”. Some 55 years on from Woodstock’s summer of love vibes, Taylor turns Joni around in the final lines of “We are not stardust/We are not golden/We are hurting/We are broken”. The chorus declares “Always ask for more”, but demand and supply seems unequal partners.
Drawing on his and co-writer Seal’s personal experiences, the sparse piano and double bass arranged DWP (Department of Works & Pensions for non-UK readers) addresses the bureaucracy and humiliations faced by job seekers (“they make you feel ashamed/Or send you to an early grave”) from a soulless and broken system (“It’s a lean, mean murdering machine/That wants us to give up on life/Make no excuse jump through hoops/They grin as they sharpen the knife”) as “in every town they grind you down”. Given Reeves and Starmer’s cold-blooded assault on vulnerable pensioners, maybe the song has resonances there, too.
With Walker on mandolin and banjo, welcome relief comes with the upbeat Americana sway feel of Mary Jane, a nature lover (“the foxes in her garden have a safe place to sleep”) and Guild D40-playing fellow musician (“When the music plays she goes to another place/She wears all of her heart on the sweetest face”).
Another real-life figure is the subject of the brushed snare and Wurlitzer-framed blues Searching For Skip James, inspired by Two Trains Running, a documentary about the Freedom Summer of 1964 as two groups of students headed for Mississippi to join the civil rights movement, but both also looking to find the 30s Delta blues singers Son House and Skip James and coax them out of retirement. Taylor sings in the voice of the three white boys from California travelling into those Hard Time Killing Floor Blues searching for the bluesmen.
The longest track at five and a half minutes, The End, Walker on wah-wah guitar and piano, is a circling melody dystopian vision of climate change and community division apocalypse where “landscapes weep, destroyed and smoking/Beneath the wreckage are the dead and choking/Desperation is everywhere you look around” as, praying for Jesus but finding only the devil, the narrator asks “what will be the end of me?” as “the fools who brought us here will never make amends”.
Not wishing to drown listeners in a flood of despair, the final three tracks take a lighter, more positive approach, the first recalling his Irish roots and with Edmead on call and response “way down” backing, being Way Down In Enniscorthy, a gospel handclapping, electric guitar and piano blues boogie swing love letter to the town in Ireland’s Wexford County “where I find myself tonight/Up on Vinegar Hill with the moon and stars shining bright”, home to the Blackstairs Blues Festival where Taylor has played.
In the penultimate number, featuring just Taylor on whisperingly brushed vocals and piano and Basta Barz on melancholic violin, given a world where “the fathers are all missing/The mothers are all dead/The children are all starving” and “politicians are as silent/As a dead baby’s breath”, he avows Only Beauty Can Save The World and that, in not raising a voice in protest, “your silence is complicity”.
Opening slowly on a gathering drone, it ends, Taylor strumming acoustic, Walker on shimmering 12 string and National steel, with Gaia which, named for the Greek Goddess of Earth personifying Mother Nature, celebrates the simple purity of nature where “The flowers bloom and the ocean sings/The clouds give strength to the eagle’s wings/The trees move to the rhythm of the breeze/The mountains stand tall above the seas… The birds harmonise the sweetest sounds/The fields of gold move gently around/The fish swim free and the horses run/Bathed in light from the heart of the sun”, as the track builds to a climax, fades to birdsong, he declares “I love you”.
The End Of The Rainbow is one of Sean Taylor’s most impassioned albums; for all the tribulations, he ultimately offers the hope and faith that “the world keeps turning by and by”.
The End Of The Rainbow (13th September 2024) Self Released.
Bandcamp: https://continentalrecordservices.bandcamp.com/album/the-end-of-the-rainbow
UK & Ireland Live Dates
12th September (UK) London (album launch) @ Betsey Trotwood
13-15th September (IRE) Enniscorthy @ Blackstairs Blues Festival
4th-5th October (UK) Callander @ Callander Blues Festival
12th October (UK) Haverfordwest @ HaverHub
26th October (UK) Hartlepool @ Hallelujah Festival
17th November (UK) (Sold Out) Whitstable @ Whitstable Sessions
An EU tour follows in Nov/Dec, details and ticket links here: https://www.seantaylorsongs.com/
