Talking Elephant 2025
DAVID BOARDMAN –
Hearsay & Heresy
Two troubadours from Cheshire look at what was written up in the stars to better understand what’s happening on this mortal coil.
If Ralph McTell was offering his company to a stranger for a stroll down the streets of London, Mark Radcliffe and David Boardman became partners in such a pastime, but that doesn’t mean their ranks are closed tightly enough to not welcome a kindred spirit. Without wasting time when it comes to a round of fresh observations, the duo haste to follow up 2024’s “First Light” – their start as a unit – with ten new songs whose subjects range far and wide, ensnared by the lads’ vocals and acoustic guitars to create arresting snapshots. And though their sonic images tend to stay within the folk frontiers, there’s quite a few interesting tangents to keep the listener simultaneously alert and entertained.
Unlike most of the artists working in the same genre, David and Mark don’t seem too fascinated with pastoral panoramas, even if the countrified “The Long Ridge” deals with natural wonders in great detail, yet it’s only an excuse for the pair to “lose the city blues” as this ballad goes, whereas the rest of the album’s pieces, from the ruminative “Merchant City, Driving Rain” onwards, explore the urban setting. The sweet blend of voices that enunciate phonetic intricacies of lyrics might be sprinkled with delicate sound effects and guesting friends’ instruments, including fiddle and piano, but Radcliffe and Boardman’s exquisite licks drive enchanting melodies beyond the rules of simple romanticism. Here’s why “On Euston Road” and “Never Had The Last Dance” envelope nostalgic verbal passages in the warm, finely filigreed glow of twelve-string strum, while the gypsy-jazz rambunctious “At The Bar San Calisto” and the mellifluous “Steal The Sea” – the former, the source of the platter’s title, concentrating on holiday reveries and the latter focusing on infinite economic feud between Mancunians and Scousers – take half-sad smiles to the fore.
Still, “Moon Fishermen” is possessed with the percussive magic that will diffuse sorrow in a richly arranged mesmeric tune, and “The Not So Grand Hotel” – which depicts the woes of asylum-seekers stuck inside four walls – turns a partially a cappella sea shanty into a dramatic dive in the depths of human soul and social mores. However, “Hearsay & Heresy” is not merely topical; it’s a series of eternally engaging statements. This is an album for thinking folks to admire and, hopefully, adore.
****4/5
