ALBUM: John McCullagh And The Escorts ‘New Born Cry’

Rating:

The album cover is very telling, harking back to the kind of graphic design that graced the covers of artists of the late ’60s and early ’70s on record labels such as Cadet, Sussex and Fantasy. That was an era when music was made from the heart for a public that had come to expect nothing less. Be it Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sixto Rodriguez, New Rotary Connection, Donald Byrd or Jerry Garcia, all made music for a buying public who had grown up reared on, and expecting nothing less than musical excellence.

It is to this era that John McCullagh directs us, almost holding our hands and guiding us back in time to jog our memories (those of us who still have one), to remind us just how music should sound when one is writing, playing and singing one’s own songs.

And McCullagh, it should be noted, is a man of precocious talent. When just 15, Alan McGee signed him to 359 Music because he was “a natural” and oversaw his debut album, North South Divide. Now slightly older and much wiser, McCullagh has developed his sound with the help of The Escorts and here delivers his second long player, New Born Cry (produced by John Power of Cast).

Busy of late touring and opening for the likes of The Strypes and Richard Hawley, he’s headed into the studio with the band fully warmed up. Kicking off with ‘She’s Calling Me’, the melody immediately puts this reviewer in mind of The Byrds, Bolan, and Dylan on the cusp of going electric, while it simultaneously invokes every single three-minute pop song that came out of the English north-west as the ’50s became the ’60s; which is good if old school guitars and lyrics of pith are your thing.

The jangled sound of early Beatles is also evoked in ‘Towerland Lullaby’ as chords resolve themselves all over the shop. It’s music made as a blueprint for a career that plans to be a long one. Which means that there’s no place for naivety or pandering to the masses. Pander to the masses and over the edge of the cliff you’ll go. So instead, McCullagh luxuriates in white blues. It’s Americana Brit-style. Guileless and free, he has nothing to lose, his ambition writ large in Hammond-and-harmonica songs like ‘Box Of Tricks’ and the souped-up ‘New York City’ (Jake Bugg could benefit from learning to sing with diction as precise as this).

‘Patterns’, meanwhile, is a showcase for JM’s guitar prowess, and echoes with the spirit of Dylan and that lost world of folk that lies buried beneath the compressed tonnage of modern mainstream pop rubble, while the melancholic, bitter-sweet ‘Angel Of The North’ is anthemic as JM proves just how easy it is to write such a thing. ‘Sal Paradise’ and ‘Between The Lines’ show off his subtle guitar work and ‘Division Street’ shines as the best track on the album: it has the muscle of Abbey Road, laced with the thrill of a live band enjoying themselves. And like ‘English Rose’ on Weller’s All Mod Cons, ‘A New Day’ arrests through an unexpected, tender approach.

It appears there’s nothing McCullagh cannot do and nothing he’s afraid of attempting with panache. He’s setting out his stall, mature beyond his years, and it’ll be interesting to watch how this young man’s career progresses.

New Born Cry is released on 4th May via 359 Music.

Jason Holmes

@JasonAHolmes