Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
The small steps that lead into the music room, the wonderfully compact and almost soulful ambient hiding hole of the great and good of Stourbridge’s musical elite that reside in Katie Fitzgerald’s have told a thousand tales, have housed some of the most expansive and genuinely beautiful talent that the area can boast. A talent that is rich and diverse and amongst it all, in the throng of a the marquee and the locally brewed guitar string and distilled to perfection lyric, stands Eddy Morton and his latest album Rainbow Man.
Featuring Andy Jones, Eliza Marshall, Aiden O’Brien, Lee Southall and the very special Sunjay, Eddy Morton has placed together the idea of the folk epic on the fringes of the West Midlands. He has let Time take a breath as its heart is momentarily stopped, congested and plunged into anarchy, the blood rising through the passion of the music and the heat of the song, although played out in fantastic Folk form, tightening and quickening the pulse of realism and letting the heart of the song speak for its self, a rare commodity.
The founding member of the Bushburys, and a prolific songwriter in his own right, Eddy Morton’s latest release is Folk dynamite, it truly captures the ideal and the patient experience, the unhurried well poured pint and the lengthy ramble through the stories in which the hero is never certain and the Clent Hills have overseen all.
Tracks such as The Battle for Stourbridge, the fantastic This Is War In Any Other Name, the haunting sadness that prowls with melancholy dripping from its fingers in When the Circus Comes To Town, Angels Never Cry and the finality that abounds in On The Journey From The Schoolhouse all have one wonderful common thread riding through them, the art of the story teller, the narrative of a man who has listened with almost gothic intent and who has chronicled the lives of those around him. He is a lyrical West Midlands version of Dylan Thomas mixed with the subtly of bands such as the Levellers.
Rainbow Man is a wonderful addition to Eddy Morton’s life as a musician, the words drip of the tongue as if they have been filtered through silver and presented with clear, concise thought. Rainbow Man is a moment of beauty.
Ian D. Hall