David Lance Callahan - Down To The Marshes (2024) Hi-Res

In this series of sonic snapshots, Wolfhounds singer David Lance Callahan sketches the now with a series of compelling postcards from England in a song cycle that combines acoustic workouts, arcane folk, desert blues and lysergic acoustic pop in a melodic and enticing whole.

David Lance Callahan has been around the block a few times with his band the Wolfhounds and his solo work and this is to his advantage. His latest album, Down To The Marshes is a song cycle that can only be created by someone who been immersed in music for decades and has lived the life for the lyrical observations that perfectly match.

The album shuffles into your consciousness with the acoustic workout of ‘The Spirit World’, a song that describes the creaking solipsism of Englishness like that other great observer of suburban suffocation, Andy Partridge, with its lyrical bon mots and observations before it enthrals with its climactic salvation army style brass band parts from Terry Edwards constructed on top of Daren Garett’s shuffle drumming. David’s baritone croon has that has a whiff of later period Edwyn Collins about it as he delvers his state of the nation address.

It sets the stall for the album that is crammed with lyrical twists and turns and sharp observations with a John Betjeman of indie dance halls sketchbook and wordplay. The songs unfold as things of melodic wonder and by taking his foot off the urgent pedal that made the Wolfhounds so enticing Dave Callahan has allowed his musical sensibilities to really breathe – there are Indian raga psychedelia trip outs on ‘Down To the Marshes’ and then there are the desert blues of ‘Refugee Blues’ a song that takes down the pompous and ugly narrative of the Farage curtain twitchers and skews them. ‘Kiss Chase’ is a guitar as hurdy gurdy mantra with an enveloping melodic twist whilst ‘Father Thames and Mother London’ is a homage to his home city and is a hypnotic psychedelic folk raga whilst ‘Robin Reliant’ is a joyous horn driven slice of sound that should be blasted out of 6music every hour if it really was committed to ‘alternative’ music.

Down To The Marshes is an album stuffed with gems, a state of the nation redress, a collection of moments in the hurly burly of modern life when time stands still and only a song will catch the moment. There is joy and wry observation and big songs that combine the electric modern folk of post-punk with indie flourishes, sixties trips and a knack for nailing the moment in song and dance. It hits the sweet spot of the ancient shivers of English folk and the eternal desert drones in the sweetest of sweet spots on the Venn diagram of creativity.

This album is an undergound gem which is its glory and its curse. Music like this needs to be allowed out to breathe and, in another world, it would be the soundtrack to the now and resounding around arenas instead of the backrooms of pubs.