Song, by Toad

The Willard Grant Conspiracy are one of my favourite bands and I have now seen them play as a rock band, I’ve seen Robert Fisher perform solo and now I can add the Pilgrim Orchestra to the list.

Pilgrim Road, the new Willard Grant Conspiracy album, is the first to make heavy use of orchestration and, when I talked to him about it after the show, Robert said he felt that the tour needed to make a statement. His attitude is that if you’re going to do something really different it would be a waste just do a standard tour and I think he’s right. The impact of the new material would be, if not lost, diluted somehow by just doing a straightforward band tour.

It’s just a shame that, having heard older material in both the other two formats, that there wasn’t time to give more old songs the Pilgrim Orchestra treatment. Again, Robert has a response that makes perfect sense: that when an album is conceived as a whole and the songs live together they might lose something by being broken up and sprinkled across a Greatest Hits setlist. So other than Distant Shore, the truly gorgeous Fare Thee Well and Soft Hand all of which appear at the end of the set, there’s barely anything from the older albums. Distant Shore is an interesting one actually. It’s from Pilgrim Road’s incendiary predecessor and is presumably rather directly related to the US invasion of Iraq, but it’s actually quite an old song these days. Have we really been stuck in that humiliating debacle that long? Christ.

You sense that Robert Fisher has real pride in the new songs. The bold, risky step to tour with such a large band is one obvious result. Beyond a couple of big, shiny exceptions bands do not make money touring, contrary to popular myth, and setting off on a national tour with this many people is taking a risk that shows great dedication to giving the music the respect it deserves. Choosing the Queen’s Hall is another. Apparently the ageing, functional grandeur of the building has been in the minds of Fisher and his co-conspirator Malcolm Lindsay since they dragged this record out of gestation and into the workshop four years ago.

On the night, without knowing much about the financial success of the show, the muscial side is a triumph. The gentle lilt to a lot of the music makes a disarming juxtaposition to the anger in the lyrics. Musically it’s sadder than it is angry, and seems to comfort rather than twist you. Regard the End was grief-stricken, Let it Roll was raging, and this seems more resigned. For what was essentially a skeleton orchestra they managed to re-create the rounder, fuller sound of the album incredibly well, although given half of them actually play on the recordings that should not be a surprise.

But really, the core of any Willard Grant Conspiracy album is of course Robert Fisher’s amazing voice. If anything, irrespective of the arrangement of the music, what communicates the emotional core of the songs is his voice, and that is the reason I will always go and see them when they play here. Bloody marvellous.

Willard Grant Conspiracy – The Pugilist
Willard Grant Conspiracy – Soft Hand
Willard Grant Conspiracy – Distant Shore

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This evening is my last show of the term on Fresh Air, and I’ve managed to persuade Mrs. Toad to join in with me. So we will be co-presenting a selection of choices, mostly by her, from 8.30pm-10pm (BST). I haven’t managed to get myself thrown off the station by myself, so let’s see if my little nightmare can do it for me, eh?

Here, in no particular order, are a couple of songs that, althought they aren’t on the playlist, give a flavour of what might be. To listen to the show itself, just go to freshair.org.uk and click on the big green Listen Live button on the right hand side. Easy peasy!

Me First & the Gimme Gimmes – Rocket Man
The Clash – I’m So Bored With the USA
Dolly Parton – 9 to 5 (Don’t ask!)

Well we know that Andy – one half of the Nightjar songwriting team – is currently banjo-bothering in London’s finest satirical drums and banjo combo Celebrity Chimp, but what of The Other One?  The Other One is a certain Mr. Jack Richold and he was responsible for the more delicate songs on that album.

Well I met up with Jack for the first time the other night to discuss the Nightjar release and he gave me a four song demo CD of the stuff he’s been working on in the past year, including two re-recordings of songs on The Moth Trap.  I don’t know much about Jack or his music beyond the Nightjar stuff, but these are absolutely gorgeous.  It’s a similar gently hushed folk music to his contributions to The Moth Trap, so perhaps not for the punk rockers in the audience, but for those of you who appreciate this sort of thing you won’t find much better.  The re-working of Lady of the Calico is utterly beautiful, and that little bit of female vocal he’s added is a masterstroke.

Without having seen him play live there’s not much more I can tell you, but I promise to sort that out as soon as I possibly can.

Jack Richold – Lady of the Calico
Jack Richold – Mary Morri