Odd Man Out

But Rod Clements, who has always shunned career path wisdom and who anyway wouldn’t be seen dead at an awards ceremony, is not most people.

Come the final demise of Lindisfarne in 2003, Rod’s reaction was a return to his roots: to the intimacy of small venues for solo gigs (while still working the bigger roots circuit with the support of guitarist Dave Hull-Denholm and bassist Ian Thomson, newly cast as the Ghosts Of Electricity)... and now, two and a half years on, to emerge with a solo album of 10 brand new songs which dispels in an instant any thoughts of his sailing off into a cosy nostalgia-tinged Geordie sunset celebrating old glories.

Odd Man Out, whilst strongly centred around the no-frills, restrained vibe for which Rod and the Ghosts have become noted at live shows, is a musical journey full of surprise and detour which moves seamlessly from country-tinged ballads to full-blooded rockers to blues. Lyrically, the album resonates with razor-sharp observations and social concerns, with anger and scepticism ultimately set against a feeling of hard-earned self-acceptance... and more than a little celebration here and there.

Now hitting his late fifties, Rod Clements is quite literally producing his best work ever.

Track by Track

ALL GROWN UP AND NOWHERE TO GO

Clattering drums and baritone guitar lead us into the album. I heard Rod and the Ghosts play this live a couple of months before we recorded it, and so I knew we were all on the same wavelength with it. I think the song is a thumbnail sketch: affectionate, a little derisive, mostly affectionate. Everyone knows this guy, probably saw him last night, he’s at the far end of the bar and he’s always got time for one more.

EXISTENTIALLY YOURS

Using a variant on the oldest of forms - the 12 bar blues - Rod launches a very 21st century tirade against organised religion and consumer culture gone mad. A sort of sceptic’s check list: nothing - from the Da Vinci Code to the Turin Shroud, from the hard sell ('they’re making lists of schoolbooks for the bonfire...') to the soft ('...[some people] hang dreamcatcher windchimes in their yard...') escapes the wrath of Rod. This track was cut entirely live in the studio with fiery guitar lines from Dave Hull-Denholm and Rod’s inimitable dobro stylings. More than 35 years on, the boy who started out on the road to kingdom come is still walking, still unimpressed by most of the distractions.

TAKING THE BACK ROAD HOME

A seemingly random encounter with an old acquaintance somehow becomes an elegiac toast to growing old disgracefully. Rod delivers the lyric in an under-sung, almost conversational style and some faintly Dylanesque Hammond from Dave 'Munch' Moore underpins the mood. A song in which two guys of 'a certain age' find themselves constantly at odds with the prevailing winds and celebrate the art of being curmudgeonly outsiders. (We had to research this a lot, but I think we got there.)

DEAD MAN’S KARAOKE

Another 'live in the studio' affair, a vibe that felt to me like a marriage of Dylan’s From A Buick 6 and the Small Faces’ Whatcha Gonna Do ‘Bout It? Again I think Dave Hull-Denholm’s rhythm/lead guitar is outstanding. Lyrically a sarcasm prevails, an air of anger and disappointment, and questions unanswered... Is 'tribute band' an oxymoron? Can 'going through the motions' in front of a paying audience ever be justified? (We had to research this a lot, but I think we got there.)

ODD MAN OUT

From blues-rock into a completely different domain: the title track has a distinctly European heart and a strong whiff of noir. The lyric sketches and suggests much but explains nothing, while a haunting dobro melody and spooky fairgound organ make for a memorable middle section. My memory is that Rod had the album title a long time before there was a song of the same name: I urged him, quite late on in the day, to come up with such a song, and a couple of weeks later I received the demo in the post, put it on and applauded. I love this.

TOUCH-ME-NOT

A trip into dark folk balladry whose timbre and acoustic guitar textures may suggest shades of Rod’s erstwhile musical bedfellow Bert Jansch. A simple boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl, girl-kills-boy tale: our narrator is seduced into a deceptively lush English pastoral idyll. The rest is botany.

RAGTOWN

Moving forward into more recent times, but only slightly... Rod tells, with trademark economy and restraint, a tale of workers on the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River in the 1930s. The dam impounds Lake Mead, on the Arizona-Nevada border, and has a hydroelectric capacity of 1,300 megawatts. I know this because I felt particularly stupid and uninformed about this song and so have just looked aforesaid dam up in the encyclopaedia. On a more serious and (maybe marginally?) more helpful note, Ragtown returns the album to slightly more characteristic Clements territory, rocks solidly and has a fine mandolin solo by the artist himself. And I can only imagine that Dave Hull-Denholm had left the building by the time this was recorded, since that is the one thing that would explain my being given the job of the harmony vocal here.

NEW BEST FRIEND

I understand from Rod that this may concern the spirit of playground politics... and two people named Tony and George. Or I may be remembering wrong. What I do know is that this is a track which we steered to places maybe less expected of Rod... in the studio the band worked up a groove that put me in mind of mid-period Lou Reed and then developed it into a middle section that faintly evoked Pavement. I would humbly suggest that the last of these sections becomes a stunning expression of anger and disgust, fuelled once again by the words Rod leaves out just as much as the ones he uses. This is probably not the track for people listening out for the next Meet Me On the Corner. But, just for the record, it is my wife’s favourite track on the album.

SEPTEMBER SUNRISE

Carpe diem with a girl and a middle eight. Survival, re-awakenings, gratitude, hard-won victories. Beautiful slide guitar from Rod, possibly bringing to mind David Lindley’s work on early Jackson Browne albums. And another perfectly judged, unsentimental and understated lead vocal, joined by Thea Gilmore’s sublime harmony.

MOROCCO BOUND

And the album goes out at a jaunty tempo that would not sit uneasily with the Folksmen, heroes of A Mighty Wind. Questions abound... will Rod actually undertake all these quirky ambitions to which he gives voice? Will the neighbours be at home to receive his door key? How long will the list he proposes making actually be? Indeed, will he travel at all? Or is it just that North West Africa deserves a better homage than Marrakesh Express?

Home