https://www.bluestownmusic.nl/recensie-malcolm-holcombe-tricks-of-the-trade/

Malcolm Holcombe - Tricks Of The Trade

Format: CD - Vinyl LP - Digital / Label: Need To Know Music

Release: 2021

Text: Bert van Kessel

An unparalleled performer who excels in commitment and intensity

Imagine the smoky pub. On stage is the artist, Tom Waits, who sings the selvages of society with his raspy voice. You use the break to get some extra intensity. But just when you think that the maximum of urgency has been achieved, Malcolm Holcombe is going onstage and adding a few more teeth and going a little deeper into the pool of evil.

Unprecedented passion and drive characteristics are speech. He is deeply involved in his subjects and, as an ex-homeless ex-addict, he knows only too well what he is singing about. It is very clever that he can maintain this distinctive passion on his studio albums, and so on this new album, it will be his sixteenth.

His loyal companions, Dave Roe and Jared Tyler, who have been working with him for years, fill in their contributions in such a way that Malcolm's voice and style come to their full advantage. Dave Roe's son Jerry is drumming and there are beautiful contributions by Mary Gauthier and Jaimee Harris on background vocals.

Ron de la Vega's cello is particularly beautiful in the moving award song Lenora Cynthia, in which Malcolm Holcombe sings love in his own way, at least that is what I think! It is nice, given his raspy voice, that the texts are attached. Even then, his poetic stream of consciousness is difficult to follow.

Malcolm Holcombe is steeped in social engagement, and as a contemporary Woody Guthrie, he denounces the world's abuses in woke's superb staircase. In most of the songs, he sings of the often tragic fate of the less fortunate, such as the refugee families, separated at the border, but especially poverty keeps coming to the fore, as in the bitter On Tennessee Land, where he sighs:

i'd rather be poor

honest to God

than a rich lyin’ son of a bitch

for a boss

Often, the deer drips off. For example, in his tirade against Trump in Crazy Man Blues:

aint it nice being white

in a president suit

you never think twice

with the crazy man blues

Malcolm Holcombe is the caricature of growling homeless far away and once again profiles himself as a hugely animated singer/songwriter and unparalleled performer who excels in commitment and intensity.

Tracks:

01. Money Train

02. Misery Loves Company

03. Into the Sunlight

04. Crazy Man Blues

05. Your Kin

06. Damn Rainy Day

07. Higher Ground

08. Good Intentions

09. On Tennessee Land

10. Lenora Cynthia

11. Tricks of the Trade

12. Windows of Amsterdam CD-ONLY BONUS TRACK

13. Shaky Ground

All songs by Malcolm Holcombe

Website: https://www.malcolmholcombe.com/