Friday 27 July 2018

Steve Tilston - Distant Days, album review


Redolent and Refreshed
 
The Road When I Was Young is the wonderful 2008 song that opens this album of revisits to Steve Tilston’s illustrious back catalogue, the lyrics my first song it still lingers…and I did stand in line with the folksingers so apt for the memorable music he has written and performed over the many years.

My previous reviews of several of his albums, and seeing him the once live in 2015, can be found here, and these should additionally speak to the extremely high regard I have for his music and playing. This collection therefore needs little extra detail other than to further wax lyrical over the sublime guitar work and singing you will hear – that vocal sounding as pristine as ever, and also remarkably youthful and reminiscent of his earliest work. Mentioned quite rightly as a guitarist in the same breath as Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and Wizz Jones, Tilston continues to impress as well as keep alive this lineage of folk greatness – listen to the wonderful finger picking and sudden descending chord shifts in All in a Dream; range with the banjo in – as one should hear – Let Your Banjo Ring; the instrumental Shinjuku from 1971’s An Acoustic Confusion with some typically fine runs.

It’s Not My Place to Fall and I Really Wanted You are also from An Acoustic Confusion and are, as ever, gorgeous to hear, and the album has nineteen tracks in all and each is beautifully redolent of the past as much as a reminder of how brightly class still shines today, not least in the timeless performance Tilston displays throughout. 


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