Songs Of The Week 2025: Take 6
- Dec 19, 2025
- 29 min read
Neil Morton
FEATURED SONG OF THE WEEK
A War With Time: Brandi Carlile
My favourite concert of 2025 featured the same artist as last year, Brandi Carlile. She and her band wowed London’s Drury Lane theatre in 2024. When she repeated the feat this year, I didn’t even have to leave the house. Her five-song performance at NPR’s Tiny Desk in Washington is proving a YouTube phenomenon, and her first offering, A War With Time, from latest album Returning To Myself, is our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.
I suppose I’m cheating a bit. By definition, a gig should count as something you travel to. But, for a variety of reasons, I wasn’t able to see as many shows as in previous years, so I was grateful to Tiny Desk and its big hug of a stage for intimate music. The restricted set may amount to the length of a warm-up act but Carlile provides quality and strength in depth. Sometimes less is more.
A War With Time was co-written by Aaron Dessner of The National who shared production duties on the album with Andrew Watt and Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver. A bright arpeggio guitar intro is followed by poetic lines achingly sung. Vernon embroiders the track with piano trills and superb harmonies in the earworm chorus. ‘When Aaron played me this otherworldly riff I saw the song unfold in front of my eyes like a black and white movie of my own memories,’ Carlile said.
Four hundred people on a broken wheel
When the plane touched down in a concrete minefield
I guess we all made it out OK
Following the streets to a sliver of blue
You can lose the sky and it can lose you too
But you get a little lost to find your way
I’m living in a war with time
I could still reach out and touch you
And I wish I didn’t know the things I know
I’m standing in an open door
None of it was overrated
And I’m never gonna wanna let you go
But I want you to go
Don’t even ask me, just go
I don’t remember the faces
Just the anger and the haunted places
So alive I could taste it on the rain
Even the roaches come from somewhere
Leaving a stain where the angels fell
In the city where no one knows your name
The Washington-born Carlile explained the mysterious verse about a scary flying experience to Apple Music: ‘I was thinking about my first trip to New York City. And I hadn’t got on a plane until I was 17 years old, which only took me to Boise, Idaho. A couple of years later, I was on a plane to New York City for the first time. I’d been to, like Los Angeles, once in Boise, Idaho, and then boom, Manhattan. So from the Cascade Mountains, it was like there were so many twisted and beautiful and inspiring and devastating things about it.
‘I felt like I was tasting the whole world in one city. And I felt so grown up and so separate of my family and our trailer, and just like the way that we lived. And I was thinking that there’s that turning point, that moment for every young person, and you don’t want it, for them to go, but you want them to go. It’s the order of things.’
Hold their eyes, make sure they know
Stand your ground but see the soul
Beneath the pain and broken home
With every drop of rain and bone
Square your shoulders, turn to stone
Slowly shake your head for no
When you find yourself alone
Retrace your steps and come back home
Dessner presented her with a backing track idea, inviting her to improvise and sing over it; a melody on top of a melody. It was Carlile’s first experience of co-writing in this way; her usual writing partners, the twins Phil and Tim Hanseroth, still figure on the album but she modifies the process on A War With Time and elsewhere with Dessner, Watt and Vernon.
She told Variety magazine: ‘It freed me up. It just blew my chest open because I was like: I don’t have to think about this. I’m either gonna be inspired by this piece of music or I’m not. And this piece that he played me was incredibly inspiring. When I heard it. I heard Bruce Hornsby, That’s Just the Way It Is. I heard Mike and the Mechanics, The Living Years. I heard Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis.
‘I heard my younger years, the years where I wasn’t thinking about verse/chorus structure, where I wasn’t thinking about what was cool. I was just thinking about what made me cry. It was so strange to not worry about production and to not worry about creation – that it was either gonna come or it wasn’t.’
The result was triumphant, as was the case with another Dessner riff on No One Knows Us, a stripped-back ballad for two that was re-recorded in LA as a band song featuring all three producers. The Tiny Desk version of A War With Time is by necessity sparse but we are treated to delightful accompaniment from the SistaStrings cello-and-violin duo of Monique and Chauntee Ross and stand-up bassman Solomon Dorsey; the twins, her bandmates for life, were given a day off.
There is no pay wall at Tiny Desk which partly explains its popularity; it survives and thrives on essential public donations. Artists love it for the easy connection with their audience. Tiny Desk shows this year have included Pulp, David Byrne, Robert Plant, Billy Strings, classical guitarist Sean Shibe, Nigerian singer Odeal, London rock duo Nova Twins and Goo Goo Dolls. The Tiny Desk has been on tour too, emulating the experience for up-and-coming atcs in cities across the US.
Self-rediscovery is the theme of the title track and album opener which grew from a poem Carlile wrote after arriving at Dessner’s home studio, Long Pond in New York State, at the end of her Joni Mitchell Jams at the Hollywood Bowl. Carlile navigates flying solo again after her collaborations with Mitchell and Elton John, her busy schedule as a producer and her challenging role of being important to many people: ‘Returning to myself is such a lonely thing to do/ But it’s the only thing to do.’ The good news is that she prefers togetherness to the solitary life.
The lovely Human, vulnerability laid bare, and the searing rocker Church And State were both written at the time of Donald Trump’s second ascension to power, the first on the eve of the election about the values she holds dear in difficult times and the second more political lyric a day later. You can feel her anger in Church And State where she recites Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists.
Of the concerts I did venture out to see in 2025, none was finer than the harmony heaven of I’m With Her, an occasional trio of stellar American songwriters and solo artists in Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan and Sara Watkins, at The Barbican in London. Their new album Wild And Clear And Blue sparkles with inventive tracks, with the gorgeous Ancient Light the most memorable. It was my favourite song of the year until Carlile’s A War With Time arrived to force a rethink and a dead heat.
We would not wish to devalue the mainstream recognition Carlile is enjoying or the tour of big arenas in the US and Europe she will be embarking upon in the new year. If anyone is capable is making a vast theatre appear cosy, it is her. But for this devotee lasting impressions are created in a smaller space. Or at a Tiny Desk.
Human Mind: Mavis Staples
We are so fortunate Mavis Staples decided against retiring in 2023. We would have been denied an album of bounteous humanity in Sad And Beautiful World. On Human Mind, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, she finds goodness and hope when all around her suggests the opposite. A voice for the generations.
Hozier and Allison Russell were asked by producer Brad Cook to write a new song for the 86-year-old Mavis, whose remarkable vocal has retained its rich rasp, and one verse, about her family’s indelible imprint on history, reduced the matriarch of gospel and roots music to tears. Her phrasing and the minor-chord swoop into ‘Burning hillsides’ and ‘Spinning B-sides’ are majestic.
I deal in love, baby
In good words, baby
From above,
Ain’t always easy to supply
But I ain’t giving up, baby
Burning hillsides,
Children dying by machines of war
And I know every tear that I’ve cried
Through the worst in my life
Was love, in full supply
God bless the human mind
Who would dream the sweet design
Even in these days I find
This far down the line
I find good in us sometimes
It was the first track to be recorded for the album. ‘Mavis is the transcendent force of love embodied,’ said Russell. ‘There is no higher honour than one of my biggest heroes being moved by words I wrote.’
I deal in loss, Daddy
I am the last, Daddy
Last of us
Ain’t always easy to believe
And I miss our family, Daddy
Spinning B-sides,
Singing By and By, we’ll meet once more
And I know everyone can still fly
The best in my life
Is love, in full supply
Cook, who grew up in North Carolina listening to the Staple Singers, recalled seeing Mavis perform live for the first time: ‘I remember being utterly floored by the conviction and power she had in her voice.’
So the multi-instrumentalist set about building every song around that beloved voice. ‘All the songs are part of me and what I’ve been singing about my whole life,’ the Chicago-born Staples told the Guardian. ‘There’s some about war, fighting, love… some about hard times. Things that are going on in the world today, so Sad and Beautiful World is the perfect title.’
Cook’s intention was to evoke the mood of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s 1972 collaborative project, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, a group of country artists old and new gathering to celebrate community and unity. He achieved his aim. The cast of extras is formidable: Bonnie Raitt, Derek Trucks, Buddy Guy, Eric Burton (Black Pumas), Nathaniel Rateliff, Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee), MJ Lederman, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Kara Jackson, Amy Ray, Anjimile, Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), Patterson Hood, Colin Croom, Jeff and Spencer Tweedy, Tré Burt, Matt Douglas, Matt McCaughan, Nathan Stocker, Rick Holmstrom, Andrew Marlin, Andy Kaulkin, Will Miller, Trever Hagen and Brad’s brother Phil Cook.
Earlier producers such as Ry Cooder, Prince, M. Ward and Jeff Tweedy tapped into her civil rights back story with carefully chosen songs. She told the Guardian: ‘When I did my album of freedom songs with Ry Cooder [We’ll Never Turn Back in 2007] we sang a song called 99 and 1/2. You know, 99 and a half won’t do… we gotta make a hundred. We gotta keep on pushing because the struggle is still alive.’
She spoke of her family opening for Martin Luther King’s speeches and services in the Sixties, and then was asked about America today: ‘There are some things going on in the US that are not pleasing to me, but I keep my head up. I turn on a light, you know, I don’t dwell on it. If someone needs me out there, I’ll be out there, but I leave that darkness out of my home and out of my life. You can’t let them bring you down.’
The rest of the tracks on the new album are covers, all bearing a message of justice and compassion, from Kevin Morby’s anti-gun violence meditation Beautiful Strangers and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings’ Hard Times (Trucks’ understated slide guitar is a joy) to Curtis Mayfield’s We Got To Have Peace, Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan’s Chicago (Trucks more strident here) and the title track, a lovely reworking of the late Mark Linkous’s song from his Sparklehorse heyday.
Her interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s timeless Anthem is moving, with its unforgettable line ‘There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in’ perfectly delivered. The album closes in joyous fashion with Eddie Hinton’s horn-soaked Sixties soul classic Everybody Needs Love, Raitt’s restrained slide guitar humbly honouring her hero.
There is no hint this album could be a last hurrah after a career spanning nearly seven decades. Huh, we hope not. Staples sounds as graceful, committed and worldly wise as ever. These days the power of prayer sustains rather than the fervour of protest but she will never miss an opportunity to advocate love and peace. The gospel according to Mavis.
December In New York: Thea Gilmore
I’ve never been a fan of Christmas songs, least of all a whole album of them. But Thea Gilmore’s Strange Communion, released back in 2009, contains some magical tracks that have a winter theme rather than a schmaltzy, festive one. The divine December In New York, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, is Gilmore at her best, a bittersweet serenade.
Her biting lyrics were in full flow when we caught her in the middle of her three-night series at London’s St Pancras Old Church. That room does something to sound and to hearts, she said. She didn’t play December In New York but we can hardly complain. Her repertoire is extensive and plenty of our favourites among her 20-plus album catalogue were featured. She has mastered the loops and gizmos she uses to enhance her solo sound but it is still her beguiling voice that can melt the heart.
Strange Communion’s genesis can be traced back to late 2004 when BBC radio presenter Janice Long, complaining of a lack of great modern Christmas songs, challenged Gilmore to write one of her own. Midwinter Toast was the lovely response but it took until she sang it again on a US tour in late 2008 for her to decide to build a seasonal album around it.
The tongue-in-cheek That’ll Be Christmas was a foot-tapping single and a stirring rendition of Elvis Costello and Paddy Moloney’s The St Stephen’s Day Murders (‘the best song about the realities of a family Christmas I’ve ever heard’) should have been a rival to The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s Fairytale Of New York. But the standouts are the hushed numbers such as the haunting pagan hymn Sol Invictus, Drunken Angel, her cover of Yoko Ono’s Listen, The Snow Is Falling, Midwinter Toast and the melancholic separation song December In New York.
Friday’s humming summer
And the whiskey sun is running
Out the night sky
I am here watching your form
Slowly pacing in the dawn
As all the stars die
Yeah you’re like a hit, you are tailored just to fit
The changing season
Baby, what is this? We are two star-crossed bits
Of an equation
Is it that you’re shining?
Is it your endgame talk?
You’re like a suntan in November
Or December in New York
The winter album is reprised in a new seven-CD boxset, My Own Private Riot, just released by Cherry Red, covering her output from 2008 to 2015. The collection, a fine starting point for newcomers to Gilmore’s music, includes three studio albums (Liejacker, Murphy’s Heart and Regardless), a live set Recorded Delivery, her track-by-track interpretations of Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding and a re-recorded version of her best-of album Ghosts & Graffiti.
Those newcomers should also check out 2003’s Avalanche and 2019’s Small World Turning, a personal favourite here. At St Pancras Old Church she sang two songs each from those albums: Pirate Moon, Razor Valentine, Grandam Gold and that beautiful ode to one of her sons, Don’t Dim Your Light For Anyone, a former Song Of The Week.
Gilmore described Love’s The Greatest Instrument of Rage from 2010’s Murphy’s Heart as ‘much more me: fierce, slightly spitty aggression’. Close behind is God’s Got Nothing On You, a barbed putdown on an unnamed egotist. ‘There are two camps who buy my music: people who want more aggressive, rapid-fire, state-of-the-union stuff, then the others who are there for the mellow, gentle, quite feminine stuff. I like being able to offer both. I like surprising people and not fitting into boxes. It’s got to be fun – if it’s not, what’s the point?’ She never fails to surprise and enchant.
I know I should be spitting bitter
Just for interest it’s more fitting
For a girl like me
But I am standing here
Amid politics and tears
And I’m shouting loudly
And the dustcart is slugging
Its way around the corner
In the morning
And if you listen close
You’ll hear the fairylights and smoke
Of the East Coast calling
A toast to December In New York: make that a warming glass of mulled wine with a slightly bitter aftertaste.
The Bridge: Mike Reid and Joe Henry (featuring Bonnie Raitt)
When seasoned American songwriters Mike Reid and Joe Henry teamed up for an album of piano-led ballads, they invited an old friend to provide harmonies on a treasured track, The Bridge, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. Bonnie Raitt makes it sound even more beautiful.
Reid and Raitt have history. Who can forget the impact I Can’t Make You Love Me made on our ears and hearts when Raitt first recorded it for her 11th studio album Luck Of The Draw in 1991 – and the hit it became for her, Adele and George Michael among others. That song was written by Reid and his old cohort Allen Shamblin, starting life as an uptempo bluegrass song with Ricky Skaggs in mind. Reid had already composed Too Soon To Tell for Nick Of Time, Bonnie’s breakout album, and knew when the first verse emerged in a ballad setting that he would be calling the Californian singer again.
As is the case with all 12 tracks on their debut collaborative album Life And Time, Reid composed The Bridge with an evocative storytelling lyric from Henry about an Irish friend who lost his wife. We have a Rodney Crowell songwriting camp in 2022 to thank for the liaison. Reid’s wonderfully weathered baritone is a perfect vehicle for a thoughtful, poignant journey. Their shared love of poetry is apparent in every line.
Reid introduced the song thus on social media: ‘A young couple deep in love, one gravely ill, take a walk in the winter to a bridge that has and will continue to have special meaning for them.’
Stay in your houses
Was the word on the street
The snow over Dublin
Falling by feet
But the bright of the darkness
Was urging us on
To the bridge where we stood
That held us so long…
Now my dreams are the only
Great solace ahead
With returning December
Calling out from my bed
Where we are together
Only in dream
The bridge covered over
Where we two remain
Henry told Songwriter Universe: ‘I was visiting my dad in North Carolina, and I heard the beginning of a song take shape in my mind. I stopped and sent a text to Mike, and asked if he would like to write something together. He used a phrase that we’ve repeated to each other since: Let’s push off the dock and into the fog and we’ll see what we find.
‘As it turns out, I sent him a complete lyric, and about 24 hours later he had finished the song and recorded a beautiful version with vocal and piano. I was so struck by the fact that with no conversation between us, no back and forth, I sent him the completed words and he sent back a completed recording. I’ve never known a collaboration like that, and then we repeated it and we continued.’
Reid explained: ‘There’s something very mysterious that happens to me emotionally, whatever that is… physically… when I sing Joe’s words. I just believe them, and more than my mind, my body believes them. The delight for me in this whole time with Joe is I got to recognise something in me that I only suspected was there.’
The Pensylvania-raised Reid, 76, was an NFL footballer with Cincinnati Bengals before he switched to music. He took up piano at six, learning the hymns from church, and was classically trained, a welcome crutch when injury ended his gridiron career. The numerous No1s must have felt like touchdowns (Ronnie Milsap’s Stranger In My House and hits for Conway Twitty, Don Williams, The Judds, Alabama, Kenny Rogers, Tim McGraw and Tanya Tucker) and earned him induction into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. Walk On Faith was a country chart No1 for him as a solo artist in 1990.
Henry has released 16 solo albums (The Gospel According To Water is a particular favourite here) and as a Grammy-winning producer has piloted projects for Solomon Burke, Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann, Allen Toussaint, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Carolina Chocolate Drops and Julian Lage. He too has history with slide-guitarist Raitt, producing her acclaimed 2011 album Slipstream.
‘Bonnie is nothing if not loyal. When she caught wind of the fact that Mike and I were writing and recording together, she was quick to volunteer to sing on The Bridge. It’s one of my favourite songs Mike and I have written. And I can no longer imagine it without her heroic spirit present.’
The 64-year-old Henry, who received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, handles the production on Life And Time with a light touch, a restraint that honours the delicacy of the melodies. Reid’s piano and Henry’s acoustic guitar are accompanied by light flourishes of pedal steel, upright bass, sax and strings. Jay Bellerose’s tasteful drumming on the gorgeous Weather Rose arrives almost as a surprise.
I’d barely let
The daylight through
When the whole of the world
Walked in with you
The title track, a meditation on mortality, has a cinematic quality. That is no accident. ‘When Joe sends me a lyric, I love the poetic aspect. I would take them out of my house and into the woods, walk around and speak them out loud. When I read Joe’s words for Life And Time, what came to mind was a movie I love called McCabe & Mrs Miller, with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. From his lyric, I got the atmospheric feeling of that movie.’
I went north when trouble came
And never knew that I
Carried you like fool’s gold
Across the borderline
Made my peace with living out
The years that passed me by
Now I wear you like a broken crown
Upon my life and time
Henry added: ‘I can recall those words coming quickly, and I imagined them like a Jimmy Webb song where there’s a character being sketched, and there’s enough detail for a listener to hopefully create their own movie behind their eyes when they hear it. But nothing so specific that it limits people to only one way of hearing the song. I always think a song is most successful when it leaves room for a listener to be a participant, not just a static receiver for it.’
Reid praised his partner’s production work: ‘Everything he added on our record, it gives the listener an opportunity to be more intimate with this singer and the songs. It’s a very intimate record, and Joe’s words are to be savoured. They’re not of a time and place, they’re of a universal human condition, of people caught in circumstances.’
The hushed elegance of The Bridge will certainly be savoured.
Ephemeral: Lydia Luce (featuring Luke Sital-Singh)
After two years of hell Lydia Luce, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter, has unveiled a heavenly album. There is no more divine a track than Ephemeral, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com. She describes it as a love song to self. It is as soothing to us as it must be to her.
In 2023, the musician was diagnosed with a number of chronic ailments, including a herniated cervical disc, bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome, tennis elbow and an inflamed bone. At one point, the pain was so bad that Luce, who runs the Music City-based collective Lockeland Strings, was struggling to function as a session violinist with surgery the only solution.
‘When I had to go back on tour after my injuries, I made a promise to myself to take care of myself no matter what,’ the Florida-born multi-instrumentalist told Magnet Magazine who premiered the single. ‘I had to learn how to trust myself again. I hadn’t earned my body’s trust, and if I was going back into this environment I had to do it in a way that would honour my body.
‘The moment I decided to ask my friend Paul Hammer to play guitar for me on that tour I felt the stress fall off of my body. I cried to my husband. I didn’t realise how terrified I was to be back in pain playing that much. I made more and more decisions like that on tour. I brought my own pillow, I booked aisle seats on planes so I could stretch, and I asked for help constantly.’
Mammoth, Luce’s third album, marks a joyous comeback, its title track named after a mountainous region in California where she went hiking over a decade ago and now acts as a metaphor for the daunting uphill journey she more recently endured.
The album was recorded in one week at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath and produced with long-time Lockeland Strings collaborator Jordan Lehning. Inspired by the tranquillity of her rural surroundings, she has created a work of whispered beauty. Field recordings were made and one can hear natural sounds such as flutters of wind and birdsong among the instruments.
I catch the silhouette of you
And linger in the moment
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
I’ll be here when you need it
We know it’s ephemeral
But it feels it’s holding on
I’ll be here when it moves along
I will never look away
When your eyes are searching
For promises that I have made
The mirror I am staring
The dreamy ballad develops into a duet with British songwriter Luke Sital-Singh whose gorgeous tones interlace seamlessly with Luce’s fragile yet precise lead…
Intertwined
Feel your embrace
You and I
Moon and sun casting shadows on and on
And we are shadows on and on
Belly was the first song she wrote for the collection. ‘I had been lying to myself and those around me, because I was afraid that if I admitted I was in pain I would lose work as a session violist. I remember playing certain songs live on guitar and being so nervous to play bar chords because the pain was so intense. Yet, I kept playing for years. It all came to a head when I was about to go on a tour playing violin in the band I was opening for. I was in rehearsal and I couldn’t feel my fingers. This was new and terrifying. Still I didn’t say anything. I used KT tape and kept on going.
‘The bridge is a coming-to-terms moment when I just accept the pain because the more I hide it the worse it gets. Once I started listening to my body and respecting my body’s boundaries, I started to heal. I have developed a connection to my body that I never had, and while I’m not grateful for the pain, I’m grateful for the outcome and the awareness.’
Tears running down my cheeks
Shimmering light of the trees
Bringing me to my knees
Oh, I’m in the belly of the beast
In August Luce shared an exquisite rendition of Quiet with backing from her Lockeland Strings cohorts. Her classical training continues to inform her melodies and elegant arrangements. ‘I want whoever is listening to my new album or watching the music videos to be inspired to go outside and sit in the grass,’ she said in an interview with Atwood Magazine. ‘This record feels like a gentle hug and an invitation to pause or take a walk outside. I hope it brings people peace when listening to it.’
From the agenda-setting title track (‘Felt my heartbeat in my fingertips/ My body telling me that I should quit/ I’ve never been the type for giving in/ But is it living if it’s gotta feel like this?/ Can you walk me through this?’) to the dreamy Wisteria and the lovely lullaby Florence, written for her child-to-be, Mammoth swells and swirls with poetic songs about the healing process and the quest for inner peace.
‘I had such a big fear that I would never be able to hold my baby without pain. I no longer have that fear. I know it will be challenging, and it may trigger some of my pain, but I have the tools to get through it and trust that I will listen to my body.’
The common thread is self-acceptance, resilience and hope. The word Ephemeral suggests a fleeting, short-lived sensation but this album will have a lasting impact on its creator and her audience.
Feathers And A Smile: Little Feat (featuring Inara George)
Memories of Lowell George, Little Feat’s slide guitar master, came flooding back when his old band announced The Last Farewell Tour and released a touching single,
Feathers And A Smile, a reworking of a little-known song written by George back in the late Sixties.
The track, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, originates from the unreleased Crazy Captain Gunboat Willie Suite from the band’s recordings for their eponymous debut album in 1971. It is sung by Bill Payne, George’s co-founder of Little Feat, with lovely harmonies from Lowell’s daughter Inara who was just under five years old when he died in 1979 at the age of 34. Payne’s piano is accompanied by Fred Tackett on mandolin and Scott Sharrard on dobro.
George’s soulful balladry brought an added dimension to Little Feat’s fiery brand of southern rock and funk. Payne does a fine job in evoking the sense of longing in the vocal, and Lowell’s daughter reminds us of that quality. ‘There’s a sweetness to it, an innocence, that feels like it’s indicative of an earlier time,’ Inara told Rolling Stone. ‘The imagery is a little more Sixties. Part of my dad’s storytelling is that he used words that were not always expected, which is something I admire.’
And you say she was the prettiest girl you’d ever seen
With her feathers and a smile
And she might be the girl who could hold
Stone-cold hearts so dear
Well if I knew the way out of this place
I would take you by the arm
And lead you outta here
Where your lover is waiting
Although her bed might not be empty
This I must admit I do not know
Or even the way out of this place
Or even the way back home
And by the by I think you are
The strangest person I know
My colleague Ian Tasker touched on the subject when discussing George’s wonderful slow-burner Willin’, a geographical and linguistic delight. This tale of a border-crossing, drugs-and-people-smuggling trucker features ‘Dallas Alice’, ‘folks and smokes from Mexico’ and a deliciously alliterative chorus: ‘I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari/ Tehachapi to Tonopah…’
One can probably trace his quirky wordplay back to his time with Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention. In our blog on 20 Million Things from his only solo album Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here, released shortly before his death, we commented: ‘Hollywood-born George’s soulful phrasing is exquisite, with typically whimsical rhymes: fence and fender dents with experience, mysterious wisteria with air.’ George was partial to self-deprecation: the band’s name was a playful reference to his small shoe size, and the solo album title acknowledged his ballooning weight, a factor in his death.
It especially poignant that Inara should be singing on the new single. It is difficult to comprehend the impact her father’s sudden passing while on tour had on her tender years. Inara recalls dancing onstage at dad’s shows. At college she started a band with friends called Lode, which didn’t last long, but The Bird And The Bee, her indie pop duo with multi-instrumentalist and producer Greg Kurstin, did; they have enjoyed sustained critical and commercial success. There were three albums too with The Living Sisters, a trio with Eleni Mandell and Becky Stark.
It was not until 2018, in her 40s and married with three children, that she felt able to confront the close-to-home subject of mortality on her fourth solo album, Dearest Everybody. Inara struggled selling it to the major labels so released it independently. Her producer Michael Andrews told NPR he had to convince her to include a song she wrote about her father, nearly four decades after his death. Inara wrote Release Me as a 70th birthday gift for her mother, deeming it far too personal for public consumption. ‘I wrote it for her about being left behind,’ she said. ‘It’s complicated, because you’re supposed to move forward, but it’s very difficult sometimes for people.’ It was her first public reckoning of his death.
George, who grew up in Topanga Canyon with her mother, learned a lot from the unconventional approach her father adopted towards his craft. ‘I’ve been the best at doing the best that I can/ I’ve spent my life in the shadow of a man/ Now I want to be the writer of the song/ And a love, not just a longing,’ she sang on Release Me.
The record helped to ease her anxiety about any perception of trading on her father’s name. She told the LA Times: ‘Now that I’m older I feel like I have less to worry about. I’ve created this whole oeuvre of my own that isn’t part of his thing. Lots of my fans have no idea who he is. So I’m not afraid of it any more.’
The Last Farewell Tour is Little Feat’s tongue-in-cheek title, a nod to The Last Record Album, for what should be a long goodbye to their era as one of rock’s most respected live acts. That gradual retirement from extensive touring will begin in April 2026.
Payne told Rolling Stone: ‘Everybody and their brother is retiring now. I’ll be honest, I resisted it at first. I’ll be 77 in March, and [guitarist] Fred Tackett is 80 and [bassist] Kenny [Gradney] will be 76 next year. But what’s the rush on farewelling this thing? It’s not an immediate cut-off. You can do residences, if they’re available, or play music with other people or do special events. With luck the wind-down will take several years to accomplish.’
Little Feat earned a Grammy nomination for their album Sam’s Place last year and followed it with Strike Up The Band, produced by Vance Powell and featuring contributions from Blackberry Smoke’s Charlie Starr and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter. As well as the man described by Jackson Browne as the Orson Welles of rock, they said farewell to drummer Richie Hayward in 2010 and guitarist Paul Barrere in 2019. Today’s lineup of Payne, Tackett, Gradney, percussionist Sam Clayton, guitarist Scott Sharrard and drummer Tony Leone, carry the baton for an ensemble outrageously omitted from several greatest bands of all time lists.
Dixie Chicken, Oh Atlanta, All That You Dream, Sailin’ Shoes, Rock And Roll Doctor, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now… Lowell George’s voice and slide guitar playing will always be treasured. Not least by his daughter. That’s what you call Long Distance Love.
Ashfields And Brine: Archie Fisher
The sad news of Archie Fisher’s passing at the age of 86 transported me back to the North-west folk scene in the Seventies, and especially to magical evenings at the Bothy Folk Club in Southport. It was there I first heard the Scottish troubadour sing his beautiful composition Ashfields And Brine, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com.
The Glasgow-born Fisher was renowned for his fine interpretations of traditional music, particularly relating to the sea and the landscape of his native Scotland, but his own songs were even more memorable. He made them sound as if they had been sung for generations. The whisky and honey warmth of his baritone voice and exquisite fingerstyle guitar could melt hearts and moisten eyes.
The moving Ashfields And Brine was an ode to nature’s ability to regenerate and regain ascendancy over the ravages of industrialisation. It was the opening track of his 1988 album Sunsets I’ve Galloped Into, recorded in Hamilton, Ontario, and was revisited on Windward Away, a 19-track collection in 2008, which included ‘lost’ recordings from sessions with Tommy Makem and Liam Clancy in the Seventies. Although several songs had been appeared on earlier albums, the missing master had never seen the light of day and the musician felt they were worthy of formal release.
Fisher’s Sunsets liner notes explained: ‘This album spans 20 years of songwriting by myself and a few friends. Every song has had a season and holds a special place surrounded by its particular memories.’ He said of Ashfield And Brine: ‘A new industrial estate now covers the old Inverness landfill on the Moray Firth which because of garden waste used to support myriad herbs and flowers despite the barren surroundings of cinders and sea.’
The Sunsets version, with Fisher on acoustic guitar, David Woodhead on piano and bass and Canadian producer Garnet Rogers on flute, violin and electric guitar, is less busy than the rescued Seventies track where his voice seems to be competing with too many instrumental distractions. But the Windward Away take and those other recovered tracks – Final Trawl, The Winter It Is Past, Silver Coin, Star Of Belle Isle, Eire Lingers, Cuillins Of Home and Joy Of My Heart – were welcome inclusions.
Come when the autumn burns through my land
And let its flame feel warm to your hand
Stay by my side while the winter comes on
You may leave in the spring when the memories are gone
Of the ashfields and brine
Love all the summer, carefree and warm
Heed now the calm of the gathering storm
Barren and bitter my last years will be
From the smoke of the fire and the spray of the sea
Leaving ashfields and brine
Ashfields and brine or gold flowers rare
Time and sweet columbine will brighten the air
And all of the sorrows and tears I have known
Will be cinders and see where a blossom has grown
Far from ashfields and brine
It was at the Bothy that I heard Fisher performing with Barbara Dickson. They recorded two albums together including Thro’ The Recent Years in 1970. Dickson was lured away to sing Beatles songs in Willy Russell’s play John, Paul, George, Ringo... and Bert. It was a privilege to be in the audience at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool for that as well as the later Blood Brothers at the Liverpool Playhouse. She was too versatile for folk to contain her and has enjoyed a highly successful recording career. She describes Fisher as her ‘musical mentor and huge cultural icon here in Scotland’ and when she returned to her former genre she just had to enlist his help.
Fisher was born into a large singing family including sisters Cilla and the departed Ray with whom he played in a skiffle band. In 1960 he moved to Edinburgh and appeared regularly at The Howff folk club run by Roy Guest. In 1962 Ray and Archie released the single Far Over the Forth and in 1965 the whole family released the album Traditional And New Songs From Scotland.
Fisher, who presented BBC Radio Scotland’s Travelling Folk show from 1983 to 2010, was honoured at Celtic Connections following his 80th birthday with artists from around the world seeking a turn on the night. Dickson and Rab Noakes were notable contributors. The evening was playfully called Archieology, the veteran balladeer digging up such back-catalogue classics as The Shipyard Apprentice.
His selections illustrated his island heritage, his affinity with the adopted Scottish borders and the influence of US folk legends such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger; the Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, whose vocal he is most compared to, must have been a favourite too. He had toured North America with Garnet Rogers and later with John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. He spent his final years in the south of Scotland, enjoying his beloved horses at Fountainhall (Ontario Dust was a tribute to one of them).
Another Canadian singer James Keelaghan paid a heartfelt tribute on Facebook: ‘Stopped in to see him and to spend the night at the hacienda near Galashiels last June. We ate curry, we told stories, drank whisky and played some songs. And in the early afternoon, I took my leave. It was the last time I saw him. But it won’t be the last time we’ll be together. Tonight I will sing Dark Eyed Molly, Final Trawl, Bill Hosie and Witch of the West-mer-lands, and we will be together again. And if we keep singing his songs, he’ll never die.’ His storytelling, whether within his songs or between them, was a delight.
Back in that sepia-tinged long ago I recall hearing him play Ashfields And Brine at the Fylde Folk Festival where younger would-be singers were probably forced to revise their ambitions. There should have been more recorded music but, like his songs, there was no rushing this balladeer. His final album, A Silent Song in 2015, had been seven years in the making. As ever, it was worth the wait. The final track is a poignant rendition of The Parting Glass.
I prefer to recall the touching final verse of another memorable song from the Sunsets album, Gunsmoke And Whisky, his tribute to an old seafaring friend...
You wandered your road, I ran in circles
We’ve walked together too short a way
Tell me you’re happy, Gunsmoke and Whisky
And I’ll be the wheel-man, just for today
Sing for the strangers that we’ve seen smiling
Sing for the lovers that we’ve seen crying
Sing all the songs that we sang for each other
Old friend and brother, before we die
Old friend and brother, for you and I
The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right: Lisa O’Neill
Sometimes even a gentle song can possess the force of a storm. It took Irish artist Lisa O’Neill more than seven years to complete her new single but we are grateful she went to the trouble. The Wind Doesn’t Blow This Far Right, our Song Of The Week at herecomesthesong.com, shakes you to the core.
The formidable songwriter from County Cavan describes the title track of her forthcoming EP as ‘a reaction to the unsettled times that we live in’. Dystopia in the now. Years of heartache and hardship inflicted by the giants of business and the ideologues of politics. The last two words of the title are deliberately chosen. The guilty are not named – from a song she began eight Novembers ago there are too many candidates – but we can guess who they are.
Oh, to be wild like the roses
Oh, to be red with delight
My blood is red out of fury
The wind doesn’t blow this far right
Some terrors are born out of nature
Some terrors are born overnight
Some terrors are born out of leaders
With their eye on a different prize
The thing is, some leaders are players
And players sometimes can be clowns
And clowns then sometimes can be dangerous
When they’re there and yet they can’t be found
The Big Mac
The big man
The big bomb
The power of money and lies
The power of fear in the people
The wind doesn’t blow this far right
The video, directed by Ellius Grace, heightens the dramatic impact of a traditional melody transformed into a tour de force by O’Neill’s unmistakable, idiosyncratic vocal. It features appearances from musicians Kae Tempest, Kevin Rowland, Spider Stacey of The Pogues and Iona Zajac, Nigerian/Irish poet Feli Speaks and actors Olwen Fouéré, Hazel Doupe, John McArdle and Jack Walsh.
Zajac provides backing vocals with Seamas Hyland on accordion, Brian Leach (hammered dulcimer and bass drum), Joseph Doyle (double bass), Mic Geraghty (harmonium), Jordon O’Leary (electric guitar) and Ruth O’Mahony Brady (piano). The cast of characters are moved to tears by the power of her delivery about how the spread of misinformation and divisive politics have damaged livelihoods and imperilled the environment – and how she will not be cowed.
Drill, baby, drill
Don’t, baby, don’t
Don’t you hear the winds
Feel the fires as they burn
Beautiful planet
Beautiful home
Drill, baby, drill
Don’t, baby, don’t
Kill, baby, kill
Don’t, baby, don’t
Don’t you hear the kids as you blindly bulldoze on
Beautiful children starved to the bone
Kill, baby, kill
Don’t, baby, don’t
The six-track EP includes a cover of Bob Dylan’s All The Tired Horses which soundtracked the closing scene of the final episode of TV drama Peaky Blinders, Homeless In The Thousands (Dublin in the Digital Age), a collaboration with Pete Doherty released as a single back in January, and the live favourite Mother Jones about the Irish union activist Mary G Harris Jones who emigrated to the US and in 1902 was called ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ for her successful campaign against the mine owners. The set is completed with a version of the hymnal The Bleak Midwinter and a reading of the James Stevens poem Autumn 1915.
O’Neill has written and sung fearlessly about social injustice: Rock The Machine about unemployment in the Dublin docklands, When Cash Was King, Violet Gibson about the Irish woman who attempted to assassinate Mussolini in 1926, and her stirring duet with Lankum’s Radie Peat on Factory Girl. Certainly the new single is a match for the best of her acclaimed 2023 album All Of This Is Chance: the magnificent Old Note, Silver Seed and Goodnight World.
The Dublin-based musician told Cordella Magazine in 2023: ‘I think that if one mind can be changed for the better via a song then it is worth writing and even still it is worth writing for the writer’s expression. The human voice when speaking the truth is a powerful form of protest.’
As Mark Radcliffe remarked on his BBC Radio 2 Folk Show: ‘She shies away from nothing.’ Unvarnished, bleak, raw, magnetic, authentic. The extraordinary voice and storytelling skills of O’Neill have drawn all the appropriate adjectives for these austere times. Chill, lady, chill.
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