R.M. Hubbert – Thirteen Lost and Found
I don’t think I approached this record with breath quite as bated as a lot of the rest of the Scottish music community. I love RM Hubbert live; watching him play the guitar really is one of the most mesmerising things you’ll see, and the sincere but humourous chat inbetween songs is as engaging as the actual performance.
At the risk of enraging classical guitarists everywhere, however, I will venture that there are limitations to what you can achieve as a solo acoustic guitarist playing entirely instrumental songs. Not that his recorded stuff was bad by any means, just that my concentration span didn’t always bear up that well over long periods. For some reason, what was engrossing live, didn’t have quite as much of a hold on me when recorded.
This, however, for previous fans and new, is the kind of record to approach without any preconceptions, because it is entirely different in flavour from previous work. The reason is simple: it is an album sprinkled liberally with guest appearances, both vocal and instrumental, which makes it sound almost like an entirely new artist at work. And given the album is apparently about friends from the last twenty years or so of Hubbert’s life I suppose it makes good sense for it to be recorded in collaboration with others.
Despite the changing voices, the constant presence of the acoustic guitar, plucked as ever with a kind of weighty seriousness, gives the record a very unified feel. Even when the vocalists change, the sense of unity is maintained. There is also a surprisingly similar feel to the song performed with Emma Pollock and Rafe Fitzpatrick, Half Light, and that sung by Marion Kenny and Hanna Tuulikki, Sunbeam Melts the Hour.
The latter in particular is absolutely bloody gorgeous, and I think the peculiar character of Tuulikki’s voice in one song seems to mirror the off-kilter scrape of the violin in the other, lending them the similar character I mentioned before. Sunbeam Melts the Hour also brings us what I think is Hubbert’s most arresting guitar performance of the album too, and one that is very different to the rest of the album, and downright oriental in style.
The fact that these guest performances are stitched together with more familiar RM Hubbert instrumentals is also an important factor. Had he simply presented an entire record of collaborations it would have been in danger of coming across as a compilation, it would have taken the emphasis just a little too much from Hubbert himself, and would (at risk of being a smart-arse here) have risked coming across just a little close too much like a ‘look at my celebrity* friends’ statement, dangerously close to the manner of Elton John.
I know I’m being facetious there, but hopefully it doesn’t mask the point I was genuinely trying to make. For all the collaborations, Hubbert still needed to make this his album, and beyond the distinctive character of his guitar playing, the regular interspersal of songs entirely his own help give this a framework into which the collaborative songs are assembled, rather than allowing them to overwhelm the whole enterprise.
The other thing I really noticed about this record was the sheer seriousness of it. Not that it’s no fun to listen to, but the combination of precise notes, and the rolling crescendoes of picked guitar (I am sure there is a technical term for this shit, I just don’t know it) have a similarly portentous feel to some of Josh T. Pearson’s playing. In fact opener We Radioed is strongly reminiscent of the phenomenal opening track on Pearson’s own record, and whilst clearly no copy, a similar and similarly impressive effect is nonetheless achieved.
I’ve used the term impressive here, and I think I should make it clear how it is meant. I do not mean in in a condescending ‘oh, jolly well done’ sort of way, more to say that the music makes a really strong impression on you. Time and again I find myself listening to this album and stopping to just absorb the impact of it, not in a deer in headlights way, just stopping to allow the impressions of the music to be absorbed uninterrupted by anything else.
And if that sounds like a high compliment, it is meant to be. This is bloody brilliant.
RM Hubbert – Sunbeam Melts the Hour
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*Yes, I know, believe me I use that term in the loosest possible sense.













