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Blair Dunlop’s Out Of The Rain is his first album since 2018’s Notes from an Island. The album was produced by Jim Moray, who also contributes ukulele, lap steel, guitars, keys and double bass, and also features Holly Brandon on fiddle with Archie Churchill Moss on accordion, cellist Graham Coe, drummer Jamie Morrison and Ellie Gower on harmonies. It gets underway with the drum intro to Ain’t No Harm, a slow-walking, fiddle-coloured folk rock song that variously treats on living in harmony with others (“Spoke to my neighbour/Spoke on his saviour/We don’t share a colour but we share the same sky”), making difficult changes (“Your mum and I, dear/We can’t stay around here/I’d say it was easy but I don’t wanna lie/I promise you this, it’s you that I’ll miss /And you’ll like us both better if we say goodbye”) and self-questioning (“You find yourself somewhere/You don’t belong there/Try to stay strong here for the little one’s sake”), but at its core is the refrain message “Ask all your questions/Seek your truth/But there ain’t no harm in trying something new”.
That sense of restlessness and the need to get away is there too on the drums pummelling, surging rocker Let’s Get Out Of The City, from whence the album title comes, a number prompted by feeling the need to get away from the urban bustle and chaos (“Sons and daughters of banking men/Space a premium, chiming Ben…Live and die by the coffee cup/Cheeks of collagen, walk of shame/Train comes in and you go again”) summed up in the soaring chorus “Let’s get out of the city, darling/Let’s get out of the rain/Every day that we stay here feels like another day in chains”.
Drums again set the pace, here a slower marching beat, for Midday Mass, another of several songs that are rooted in the changing face of the landscape in response to economic factors, again contrasting big city and small town living (“Filter coffee but it’s half the price/Veg oil dripping down the old fish slice”), the latter suffering from industrial decline (“Greasy palace on stony ground/Right in the middle of town/And it ain’t been busy since the pits closed down”) where “It’s a strange old time in a strange old space where the working man he just feels displaced” but its people defiant and resilient (“Waitress staying on more than planned/Fends off whistles while she’s in demand/It’s a thankless task but it’s cash in hand/The bills won’t pay themselves … Looking for an atmosphere, they bring it/Classic on the radio and they sing it/It’s a church choir, if anything/It’s midday mass and tea for five/The working is hard but the fun comes easy/Every night they’re loving freely”). There’s also a swipe at the tensions stoked by the gutter press (“Murdoch’s rags turn race on race/I blame them, do you?/Sadly it’s a problem and I see it/People see a headline and believe it/If it’s on the table, people read it”), nicely counteracted by the café (the substitute church and congregation) simply not leaving them out to be read.
Simply strummed on guitar, Julietta is a straightforward love song about improving mental health, the name presumably chosen as it rhymes with letter and better (“Wrote this song for you/To help you with your blues/Or help me with mine/I hope that’s alright/It helped me through the night/We’ll meet sometime”). Then the pace picks up again for another upbeat rocker with chiming guitars and striding drums in I Wanna Be Running, a song basically about getting your mojo back (“Tiring, none of the synapses firing/Wiring, something you cannot teach…Sharing all the thoughts I’ve been wearing/Staring at the screen in the dark/Caring, oh my folks are despairing/I am repairing, trying to get back the spark”) that combines a nagging melody with catchy hooks and chorus.
Slowed down again to a steady walking rhythm, Slipstream, his voice soaring on the refrain, is an interesting one that seems to concern mental confusion (“I couldn’t tell where the cards fell on the table/All that I know is a mystery/Morning arose and the whole world seemed distant”) and anxiety (“In come the fears, wiping the tears from the nightmares/I’ve started to give them personalities/I saw a face and it’s clouding my judgement/When I’m crying myself to sleep …I’m alive but it doesn’t feel real to me”).
Arguably the most immediate crowd-pleaser on the album, he’s back to themes of change for the worse in the punchy, driving, guitar-chiming Brick On Brick (HA9), a kind of protest song inspired by the prefab quick build projects around his old Wembley stomping ground (“The landlord wanted a quick sale/Just a box by the side of the road/Three stories steep at the end of the street/As soon as they listed, it sold…Now the cranes tower high up above me/And the workers work under the moon…Brick on brick on foreign brick/We build them quick to the deadline/Gold on gold on foreign gold/It all gets sold in HA9”).
More of a chugger, When Will I Learn? returns to the love song but laced with facing its loss (“We need to turn the pages alone/This book of love is all that I’ve known/I can see the feelings have flown/And we need to turn the pages alone/Looking around the room/I can’t see the space for two/I should know by now/When it turns/I could go right now/But it burns”).
Backed by organ and strings, with a dash of whistling, the slow swaying Boots On The Side is another about slowing things down and taking time to rest (“Island to mainland, railroads and tiles/Amble a while, then take a breath”), healing through the tranquillity (“Calmness exuding, indelible peace/Hold and release, I feel whole again”) and unburdening (“I’ll open up when it’s time to get hurt/I’ll open up when I’m not on alert”).
The penultimate For All The Trees is another slow-walking rhythm number with banjo, fiddle and some twangy guitar, the metaphorical title underscoring the state of the world protest nature of the lyrics with lines like “the chamber’s barking orders/And arguing over borders” and “They told me I’m grounded, I can’t see my friends/They live across the water that we now defend”, “Well the pocket lining’s thicker/And the oil dance just gets slicker” and the self-interest apathy that greets it (“Well the hanging basket’s watered/And the Persian kids are slaughtered… Worst of all I don’t know what to have for tea/They told me to stock the pantry/As long as it ain’t too fancy”).
It ends with the longest track and a decidedly personal number that stems from his love of old cars, opening with the sound of motor engines and cheering crowds, the stately, banjo-coloured, slowly building 1989 San Remo Conqueror being about a Lancia Delta Integrale, the most successful rally car ever, the winner of the 1989 Sam Remo Rally. The song finds the car “Hidden away, tarpaulin’s seen better days/Poking out from underneath/White wing and four wheels, mud caked up the door seals”, the owner recalling his father’s glory days, the deaths of fellow rally drivers Henri Toivonen in 1986 and Francis Malaussene in 1990, and taking her out for one last spin, the metaphorical subtext fairly evident in the final lines “Check the oil pressure before we depart/We could go wherever, give us a map to chart/We could brave the weather, heal our broken hearts”. With the vinyl version including bonus tracks of Iberian Season and live acoustic versions of Running and Mass, this is a glorious welcome re-energised return that should comfortably reinstate Dunlop among folk rock’s upper echelons.
Out Of The Rain is released on 24th May 2024 via Gilded Wings
