Lives Outgrown DOMINO
BETH GIBBONS
THE UNCUT GUIDE TO THIS MONTH’S KEY RELEASES
A singular voice in British music explores new depths in middle age.
By Laura Barton
“I can change the way I feel/I can make my body heal”
ALBUM OF THE MONTH 9/10
EVAVERMANDEL
IN recent times, we have tended to place great faith in late-life albums by revered artists. Johnny Cash’s releases on American Recordings, begun in 1994, perhaps set the course; since then has come, if not an explosion, at least asoft bloom of such records, from David Bowie’s Blackstar to Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, via Bob Dylan’s Rough And Rowdy Ways and even Tom Jones’ run of recordings with Ethan Johns. These are records we covet for their sense of retrospection and accumulated wisdom, for the light they seem to cast on our callow years.
We accord less fanfare to music that addresses the thoughts and sensations of midlife. And this is odd, because midlife can prove afascinating shift for those once caught up in the hedonism of the music world –they are, in effect, break-up records of the self. Consider Paul Simon’s Graceland, Frank Black’s Honeycomb, Bonnie Raitt’s Nick Of Time; their push away from youth, their sense of recalibration in the face of detour or disappointment, is every bit as compelling as the oak-aged material of the older musician.