https://www.paris-move.com/reviews/malcolm-holcombe-bits-and-pieces/

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Tue, Jun 20, 5:29 AM (2 days ago)

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MALCOLM HOLCOMBE – BITS & PIECES

Need To Know Music / Proper Music

AMERICANA

And 16. In nearly thirty years, that's the number of albums that this intractable songwriter has managed to publish, year after year (whose two predecessors we have reviewed HERE and HERE ). Because it is certainly too late to expect from this atypical resident of Nashville the slightest compromise that could assure him in extremis a form of respite, in his career marked by the seal of precariousness. It was also very close that we lost him for good, since he had just been diagnosed with cancer in 2022. kind of scoop, however, is almost in his eyes a simple incident. As at this stage, you no longer change a winning team, he recorded these 13 new vignettes in record time at Echo Mountain studios in Asheville, leaving it to his faithful accomplice Jared Tyler to then soberly dress the arrangements. at Blue Alleluia Studio in Tulsa. Because for those who are not yet familiar with the art of Holcombe, his obstetrics has for a long time been due to the ability of this good Tyler to ensure it alone, in addition to co-production (which he shares here with Brian Brikerhoff) , the parts of dobro, lap-steel, acoustic, electric and baritone guitars, mandolin and banjo, as well as those of bass, drums and choirs. From the titular track which opens the festivities, we find the characteristics of the character intact: this alert picking (testifying to years of practice in the Mississippi John Hurt songbook), this elocution as pasty as it is determined (giving his refrains the air of buccaneering in the long course), and this acerbic poetry, half-spit, half-thrown with a punch, like only a few giants before him, among whom we can only find Townes Van Zandt, John Prine, Guy Clark and other olibrii of an equivalent caliber. And while we refrain from mentioning Dylan on this list, this damn “Fill Those Shoes” tumbles out, which one would think came from (or survived) the “New Morning” sessions. Good God, we could cite a contingent of applicants ready to sell their own sister to gain access, if only for a minute, to this grace in the purity and elliptical expression, the impact of which paralyzes the listener (it's only the second track, and I've already played it three times). In the same vein, “Hard Luck City”, “Another Sweet Deal” and “Bootstraps” evoke the Appalachian side of bluegrass, while the enigmatic “The Wind Doesn't Know You” and “Happy Wonderland” summon the ghost of Calvin Russell (who of course almost no one has ever heard of in Nashville). Between JJ Cale and an apocryphal Dylan, the furious and bluesy “Conscience Of Man” sends the salutary kick in the balls called these days by white supremacism, armed and paranoid, back in vogue in his country. The benevolent specters of the greats John Hurt and Roscoe Holcomb (also often invoked by Peter Case) manifest themselves again on "Ev'ry Soul Is There" and "I've Been There", while with their biblical and consumerist parables , “Eye Of A Needle” and “Bring To Fly” return to tickle Zimmerman on his flowerbeds. As an Anglo-Saxon chronicler put it, if unfortunately you did not yet know Malcolm Holcombe, here is undoubtedly one of the best ways to access it.

Patrick DALLONGEVILLE
Paris-Move , Blues Magazine , Illico & BluesBoarder

PARIS-MOVE, June 20th 2023

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Album available on the Fnac website

Also read on the website of our friends Americana UK

G Promo PR