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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Steve Butler last released an album in 1980 and when I was watching his live set at Greenbelt I felt nervous for him. It took a couple of tunes before I relaxed into the remembrance that he was one third of the fabulous Scottish band Lies Damned Lies who never put a chord or harmony wrong. Butler is a class act and his first solo album in twenty years has quality written all over its nine songs. Love Come Down is not a sign of Lies Damned Lies demise. They have simply not got round to following up the artistic amazement of Lamentations. In the meantime Butler had a few tunes and thought he’d record them. It’s an interesting insight to Butler’s own influences away from Dot Reid and Charlie Irvine and a wee pointer to where he is as a person just now. Since the release of Lamentations, Butler has relocated to Edinburgh and has got back to his original calling of Anglican vicar, that he’d put on the back burner when major deal struck the Lies in the late 80’s. Seems to me these songs are definitely the work of a man who is preaching and pastoring. There’s a real relational quality to the content. A sense of a man having to look at people and their interconnections in a way that sends him back to look at himself and how he connects and has connected down the years. Friendship is certainly ever present in songs like "Hill of the Angels," "My Regrets About You," "There You Were," and "Heart of Perfection." Jesus could be masquerading behind the eyes of these friendships and it is a meditation on his friends rejecting him that is the influence for Primrose Road. There is certainly a man in search of being a better man in the way he loves and stays faithful. The island of Iona is the topic of "Some Kind of Meaning" and that "Hill of the Angels" is also a place on the island. "The More Loving One" is a thoughtful reflection on a mother and son who died soon after Steve met them. "Til We Have Faces" is of course CS Lewis. The voice is deep and rich and vulnerable. The poetry is inventive and deeply spiritual. The sound is mid seventies Jackson Browne. In fact "My Regrets About You" is "Fountain of Sorrow," "Sleeps Dark," "Silent Gate," and "Everyman" all in one. The piano playing is beautiful. It is an album that is full of one liners that will have you pondering for some time. Steve Stockman 9/7/2000
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