Andy White - The night is approaching though some would say it was morning (2025)

Double-CD set recorded live in Abbey Road Studio Two on July 14, 2023. Produced and mixed by John Leckie. Disc One is the evening session, Disc Two the afternoon session. Release date is 30 May, 2025. The latest release from Andy White `The Night Is Approaching Though Some Would Say It Was Morning` is a live album. The story of this live album begins with the friendship between Andy and producer John Leckie who has mixed and produced many of Andy’s recordings. After one of Andy’s concerts, John told him he wanted to buy an album of what he had just heard. A solo album recorded live. No band. No overdubs. “Where are we going to record it?” “The best sounding room in the world – Studio Two at Abbey Road.” On July 14, 2023, Andy and John met at Abbey Road, John had got his first job there in 1970 and this double album is the result.

The album begins with applause as the singer opens with `Street Scenes from my Heart` which almost paints a picture where you imagine being there alongside the singer. It an almost cinematic canvas but rather than being painted with brushes or shared through a camera, it`s captured with just a guitar and vocals. Forty years on `Religious Persuasion` is still a song that has an impact, especially coming from somebody who was living through dangerous times where their hometown was divided by which version of Christianity you believed in, a courageous and spirited reflection during those troubled times.

`If You Want It` written with Allison Russell (Po’ Girl, The Birds Of Chicago) is a number about climate change which has everybody singing along to. I always feel it`s an Irish thing but like Mr White, I also try to find significant graves when in foreign climes. Whilst on a trip to Prague I found the graves of composers Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák, Jan Palach a political protester and student and the novelist and writer Franz Kafka. But here `James Joyce’s Grave` is more personal as James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic and regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the twentieth century. The song leads us by the hand from Dublin`s Dún Laoghaire`s Martello Tower and ends in success in Zürich, Switzerland.

`The Colour Of Love` has a simple unobtrusive sound but is so expansive about motorcycle tightrope riders and the kind of Shakespearian love between Susana and Fernando, a song written on tour in Vitoria, Northwest Spain. Fifty years ago, a friend of my mom housed female Italian exchange students and `Italian Girls On Mopeds` has the power to stir recollections of those pretty innocent youthful times. If you get to see Andy share this live ask him about the guy from Inverness.

`Berlin 6 AM` evokes the life of this troubadour or wandering minstrel and is a snapshot of East Berlin circa 1990. A reminiscence of home from his adopted home of Melbourne, Australia comes with `Take Me Back Home`, a song of longing for times gone by maybe.

`The Guilty And The Innocent` is thoughtful and a touch political but allows you to make your own mind up and determine or decide your own conclusion. The final number comes with `Vision Of You` from where the album`s title comes from, the first lines of this song in fact. It`s a delightfully emotive track that has everybody singing along.

This album came from the afternoon session at Abbey Road. The double-CD set includes the evening session on a bonus disc as a small group of friends and family attended the recording.
Its back in time as the politically contemplative `Come Down To The Sea` eases us in, the harmonica giving it a hint of Dylan before `Reality Row` evokes a crazy New Years evening in Clones, County Monaghan.

`Rembrandt Hat` is a further meditative offering that appears to be about the ending of a romantic relationship with harmonica hues that give it a further poignancy. There`s a similar heartbreaking mood to `Everything’s Turning White` another kind of breakup song possibly with a dreamy reflective tone.
`Things Start To Unwind` has a peculiar air about it and could well be an early surreal echo on the singer`s home city. Again the singer`s birthplace stirs memories with `Get It Right This Time` but here the number feels quite self-examining as if looking back on where he once was to where he`s come.

`Theresa Theresa `is an unreleased song with a strummed backing about a lady who had a lot of siblings and who used them as an excuse not to party. There`s a real sense of nostalgia shared throughout the tender almost philosophical `Long Time Coming`.
`Birds Of Passage` could well be a metaphorical piece on migration and returning to where you originally travelled from, albeit briefly. The set closes out with `Broken Hearted` which is a traditional balled about a lover’s loss during the Peninsular War against Napoleon and a song Andy heard by Dolores Keane from De Dannon which she released as `The Bonnie Light Horseman`. A deeply thoughtful observation on the devastating individual effects of conflict and fairly relevant in today`s difficult climate.

The album is dedicated to Janice Long and Joanna Beckitt, both who supported Andy throughout his career.

`The Night Is Approaching Though Some Would Say It Was Morning` includes songs from throughout Andy White`s songwriting career with tracks that will make you laugh, possibly cry, and maybe leave you with some food for thought. An Andy White live experience is always a joy to behold and this release does go a long way to capture the unique atmosphere of actually being there.