Myer U Clark shares debut album ‘Tinderbox’
The folk singer shares the wonderfully strange debut.
★★★★☆
Photo: Jack Ogborne
Tinderbox is the debut album by Bristol-based idiosyncratic folk singer Myer U Clark. It is full of wonderfully strange, off-kilter, unique and creative folk songs. There is so much going on in these songs that it can take a few listens to really dig beneath their surface and fully grasp everything that’s going on. When you do, it is an endless treat.
These songs are as delightful as they are deceptive. With most songs clocking in around the two-minute mark, they never outstay their welcome. They are so jam-packed with curious ideas that, after hearing them once, you are itching to spin them again.
Whilst there was nothing premeditated about the album’s creation, Clark says that “when I listen to it now, there’s a spirit guiding the songs.” According to Clark, that spirit would be the spirit of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who was famous for exploring the unconscious feminine side of the male psyche. If this sounds remarkably strange for a folk record, then I think it will make a lot more sense when you dig deeper into the songs.
Tinderbox is full of ambitious songs that are keen to challenge the listener and aim higher than simply existing as traditional folk songs. Album highlight Healers, for example, is a wonderful and delicately delightful song that sounds like McCartney-era Paul McCartney trying his hand at folk music.
This album is full of abstract pop songs masquerading as folk songs. Make A Bet has a bewilderingly catchy and uplifting chorus alongside a vintage Richard Thompson-inspired fiddle part. In fact, the musical smorgasbord on display here is incredibly impressive. These songs are decorated with all sorts of interesting instruments from banjo, viola and cabasas, to oboe, double bass and harmonium.
Tinderbox is overflowing with creativity. Simple Sailing quite literally slows down and falls apart as it ends, whilst Sense By Sense somehow evokes early American Football with its swirling guitar lines and haunting moodiness. Elsewhere, these songs bring to mind Richard Dawson’s folkier songs and, when Clark is at his most stripped back, it recalls the relaxed classics on Nick Drake’s seminal Five Leaves Left.
Tinderbox is a real grab bag of every different way you can create, pull apart and twist a folk song. It is all over the place and, for the most part, it works. These songs are dynamic, captivating and full of interesting ideas. Clark says that he feels “at home when I hear disorientation in a song. It feels natural. Even a bit moving.” It’s not hard to see why.
On Tinderbox, he has put together a solid collection of songs that fire off in multiple disorienting directions while never feeling anything less than captivating and charming.
Tinderbox is out now via Broadside Hacks.
You can also find this interview in print. Pre-order Issue 2 of The Indie Scene Magazine here.
