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Shetland-born Malachy Tallack is both singer-songwriter and author (as well as managing editor of Gutter magazine, Scotland’s leading literary journal); his novel The Valley at the Centre of the World was shortlisted for the 2018 Highland Book Prize and Illuminated by Water was shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies award for nature writing in 2022. That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz is his debut album, released simultaneously (vinyl and digital only) with the publication by Canongate Books of his latest novel, which, with the same title, acts as a companion piece. The songs written for and featured in the novel are written by the main character, Jack, a man in his mid-sixties who lives alone in the cottage where he grew up in the Shetlands. Referencing the region’s land and seascapes, musically, it traverses country, bluegrass and Americana in its exploration of the power of music and the notion of belonging, telling the story of unlikely friendship, longing and the pull of home, the plot following events, after his life changes when something appears on his doorstep.
Featuring musical contributions from fellow Shetlanders, double bassist Andrew Gifford from Fiddlers’ Bid and Jenna Reid (Rant, Blazin’ Fiddles) on fiddle and vocals, mandolinist Laura-Beth Salter, Mànran drummer Mark Scobbie and Conor Smith on pedal steel, it opens with the guitar, dappling mandolin and fiddle sounds of Wide Ocean Blue, a song of separation and yearning (“She wanted to see this old world for herself/So she sailed and left me alone…I think of her often wherever she is/In love with that sweet foreign air… I curse the distance between us/I curse that wide ocean blue”).
With a melody reminiscent of Long Black Veil, Dear No One is another story about absent friends. The narrator finds a message in a bottle that reads, “Dear no one, I’m thinking of you, my old friend.” He eventually returns it to the sea, hoping to bring comfort to whoever finds it next.
Loss and emptiness (“On the day that you left me you wished me all the best/And you know that I wish you the same/But wishes can’t help me when the best has long gone”) are the mainstays of The Hurt and the Heather which, despite the Scottish suggestion of the title, is a slow cowboy country swayer in the manner of Jimmy Rogers with some lovely mandolin picking from Salter. And there’s more old-time country with the fiddle leading off The Lighthouse, a lightly waltzing number that picks up the same theme and gives it imagery to suit the title (“Though we’re here inside the same room you feel so far from me/You’re like a ship alone adrift upon the angry sea/But you know that I still love you, as I’ve loved you for so long/I just wish that I could understand what it is that I’ve done wrong”) as the singer vows to remain a haven in need (“if you’re passing by I will light your way, so you can go alone/And if you’re lost I will lead you home”). It would sound right at home on Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizell or Bob Wills albums.
Side one concludes with the mandolin, fiddle, fingerpicking and female harmonies of When I Talk In My Sleep, another that could have been pulled from an old 50s country album and again steeped in the genre’s tradition of rueful regret (“I never really said goodbye/I just turned and walked away/I didn’t mean to be so cruel/I wasn’t strong enough to stay…And I’ve lost more than I ever knew I had/It’s the price I’ve had to pay…When I talk in my sleep I’m talking to her”).
The second side opens with the stripped-back slow waltz Loretta and a more upbeat note after the preceding heartache (“Loretta, I used to be lonesome/There’s times when I still feel that way/But seeing you there, no worry, no care/I don’t feel so lonesome today”). However, that’s soon pushed aside for more regret with the musically jaunty tones of the brushed snare and pedal steel spun two-stepper Home (“I would steal, I would beg, I would borrow/I would stand in the darkness alone/I would trade all my days for tomorrow/If I could just be back at home”).
Strummed guitar setting the scene before things perk up with the arrival of the fiddle, That Lonely Mountain steers things into O Brother Appalachian gospel territory (“I will climb that lonely mountain, the one that watches over me/I will stand upon its shoulders, just to see what I can see”), Salter delivering another nifty mandolin solo as the song builds to its uplifting unaccompanied close as you expect the congregation to raise their hands and join in.
I Miss You Today is pure vintage crying into your beer honky tonk along with the weeping steel George Jones (“I’ve been lost and on my own/I’ve been talking to myself/About the love that I have known/It’s a bargain we both made/Wouldn’t have it any other way/We met, we loved, we parted/And I miss you today”), giving way to more maritime imagery (“I was waltzing on the waves, I was foolish, I was brave/I was doing the best that I could/I let down my guard, the sea hit me hard/And it took me like a piece of driftwood”) echoing Patti Paige’s classic waltzer lament, except here it’s an ocean, not an old friend that takes the sweetheart way.
Undoubtedly inspired by the opening line of Folsom Prison Blues, he sings, “When I was just a young man, my mother told me, Son/Don’t waste your time a-wishing for what’s gone” it ends with mournful fiddle in fine fettle for My Worthless Possessions, again with a slight rustle of that black veil, as Jack weighs the balance of lessons learnt and grief and regret accrued as he faces whatever future he has left with a defiant “if I could I would do it all again”. At a time when a plethora of American artists are falling over themselves to recreate the spirit and songs of old-time country, who would have thought that one of the year’s best and most authentic sounding would come from the Shetlands?
That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz (24th October 2024) Self Released
Bandcamp: https://malachytallack.bandcamp.com/album/that-beautiful-atlantic-waltz
