Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Don’t ask someone to teach you the tricks of the trade, if you are not going to learn the hard lessons that trade is willing to demand of you.
However, life itself is more than willing to be a demanding teacher, you may have been round the block more than a few hundred times, hopefully scratched more than the surface of your chosen pastime, genre or love, and yet, indisputably, unarguably, the Tricks of the Trade evade us, for we are always presented with a chance to learn a new part to the machine we have tied ourselves to, or maybe the moment to realise that we are free to consciously admit that the surprise of an unexpected treasure that has been around for so long and yet we have only just taken the ribbons of pleasure off.
Look at yourself in the mirror and admonish yourself for not knowing Malcom Holcombe; then immediately forgive, then praise the fact that you have a huge swathe of music to investigate, starting with the latest of his releases, Tricks of the Trade.
A singer/songwriter that can engage in the local issues as well as the national problems is worth their weight in gold, to tackle on a global scale all that binds us, the scourge of Government inflicted despair, hunger, poverty, the local issues of toxic officials ruining the working class lives with even greater demands of subservience; these are the artists in which to hold close, for they are they ones that inspire the confidence to fight back, these are the musicians that know how to strike at the heart of the machine.
Through tracks such as Misery Loves Company, Crazy Man Blues, the excellent Your Kin and Damn Rainy Day, Good Intentions, On Tennessee Land, the two-bonus additions of Windows of Amsterdam, Shaky Ground, and the album title track of Tricks of the Trade, Malcom Holcombe moves with passion and silent humble demeanour into a place of vocational belief, an occupation to which the music and the words take over and become the weapons in which he fashions strength from. Like Woody Guthrie he speaks a truth with honour in his voice, the folk singer earns the respect due, the lyric is endowed with trust.
A collection of songs that come from the heart, there is no fluff, no double talking; all that Malcome Holcombe has in his courage and spirit is on the album, all that the artist encompasses is there for all to take inspiration from.
Malcolm Holcombe releases Tricks of the Trade on August 20th via Need To Know Music.
Ian D. Hall