Malcolm HOLCOMBE
"Bits & Pieces"
"He is one of the greats but too few know it". This is how I ended the review of Tricks Of The Tale, Malcolm Holcombe's previous album (Le Cri du Coyote, #170). Nothing has changed, except that Malcolm, already considered a survivor of many hardships, had, like his role model John Prine before him, to face cancer diagnosed in 2022. He decided with his friend Jared Tyler , his musical double, not knowing what the future held for him, to record a few songs that could eventually lead to an album. So here are Bits & Pieces, thirteen titles composed by Malcolm and interpreted by the only two men (Malcolm on acoustic guitar and vocals, Jared taking care of everything else). The songwriter's voice evokes that of the Dylan of the 2000s, and Jared's performances, notably on dobro and lap steel, illuminate compositions with often dark themes and texts imbued with wisdom and full of what his friends call malcolmisms. . Listen carefully to, for example, Happy Wonderland ("You gotta butter your bread on the right side / Don't whistle at the girls around you"), The Wind Doesn't Know You ("It's a daily battle to wake up in the morning "), Bring To Fly, I Been There, and you will hear so many life lessons delivered with a good dose of humor. He often makes observations about the harshness of life, as in Fill These Shoes: "People are killed for no reason / Some give their lives so that others continue to breathe". Even if you don't understand English (the CD includes a booklet with the lyrics, which is becoming rare), you can't help but appreciate the blues-folk of Malcolm Holcombe and the complicity that binds him to Jared Tyler. Bits & Pieces is his eighteenth album, the fifth since 2016 that I have reviewed for Le Cri du Coyote, and it is without one of his best, even if he has shown, for more than thirty years, a constancy in rare quality at this level.
G Promo PR