With
a fascinating and varied career, multi-instrumentalist Duncan Parsons has appeared as the drummer with the John Hackett Band, the bassist for Joanne Harris’ Storytime Band and as collaborator with all manner of other artists.
More a sampler of his solo output since 2012 than a brand-new album, the humorously titled I’m Here, All Weak brings together choice remixes, re-recordings and edits of tracks from his six studio albums and adds a couple of previously unreleased cuts. Although Parsons has an identifiable voice, both vocally and musically, it’s sometimes hard to get a handle on the direction of travel from one track to the next; previously unreleased instrumental Queenie And Elmo At The Museum is a sunny Latin jazz-influenced acoustic number, while on Footnote In Your
Heart’s gentle guitar-led folky reflection on lost love and the similarly styled Wond’ring A’lowed, Parsons presents as a slightly more assertive Nick Drake. Furry Leaves sounds like a comedy
jazz lounge band take on
Beethoven’s Für Elise with a random rock guitarist (in reality the highly talented Nick Fletcher) plugging in for an incongruous solo in the middle section.
There are some lovely lyrical constructions and appearances from guests as varied as John Hackett on flute, the legendary bassist Leland Sklar and Kayak’s founder and keyboardist Ton Scherpenzeel. It is consistently raw (not in a pejorative sense) and acutely intimate – even, inexplicably, with a celestial 130-voice choir joining in final track Take Me By The Hand – and often sounds like something beamed from an earlier, more innocent musical era. This isn’t to damn with faint praise – it’s a thoughtful, sometimes unexpected and worthwhile musical journey, made more intriguing by brief context provided by Parsons for each track. However, with mostly acoustic instruments and relatively sparse arrangements, it’s a human antithesis to so much overly slick, expansive 21st-century rock music.
GMM