Think Like A Key 2025
Wondrously wide-eyed introspection from English artist who trades memories of deadly nightshade for nocturnal dreams of being dead at the core.
For Those That Wander By
Challenging the obvious became this musician’s motto from the moment his 1975 debut “Kid In A Big World” revealed John Howard as an incredibly mature singer-songwriter whose piano ballads seemed possessed of dreary, even morbid, magnetism and exuded wisdom of much older person. However, fifty years on – and two decades since “The Dangerous Hours” signaled the veteran’s return to performative aspect of things after a long spell in A&R – the rhapsode of gloom would access the same cache of soul-searching with an unbelievably youthful, rather than age-bound, stance. With about twenty similarly ruminative albums issued between his comeback and “For Those That Wander By” that sees Howard wrap hard-hitting, albeit magnificent, melodies around old collaborator, Robert Cochrane’s deep-cutting poems, John’s listener may assume that they know what to expect of him and that there can be no surprises on his records, but eight pieces on display here will delicately prove them wrong.
Howard is still fascinated with death, as suggested by slow passages of “Losing Myself In Others” that eulogizes the tragic fate of British wordsmith Roddie Ward via John’s chamber approach to ivories and strings, yet his soaring, if gravity-harnessing, voice and solemn delivery of Cochrane’s arresting stanzas are defiantly life-affirming, especially when honeyed vocal harmonies turn choruses into small pop-oratorios. That’s why, while “Dead At The Scene” sounds so serene in its channeling of penumbral reveries, the deliciously camp “The Man Who Was America” details the drama of another gay icon, actor Paul America, through briskly paced lines and the “Yeah oh yeah” refrain, and the organ-bolstered “Casati’s Tears” waltzes towards pre-war pastiche, as does, with much panache, “No Glitter In Revenge” further on. And though the harmonica-helped “Return Postcards” resorts to vaudevillian elegance to stream sorrow into the ether, as opposed to the intimately intoned “A Scant Importance” which transforms despair to uplift over a gentle ticking of percussion, the platter’s magnificently plaintive title track looks into the middle distance to bring things to a close in a hopeful, embrace-offering manner.
Easy to relate to, this album is a masterclass in being pure at heart – against all odds.
*****
