WILLS & THE WILLING – Another Long Week
(Smash & Grab Music SMASHGCDE2)

I’m not quite sure, listening to this, his fifth album, how The Times came to describe Ian Wills as a 21 century Ian Dury. Certainly they share a lyrical craftsmanship but musically Wills is very much of an Americana and country persuasion (he’s partly based in Arizona), something accentuated by the presence of Melvin Duffy’s pedal steel. Featuring assorted sideman on drums, bass and guitars (the latter including Liam Genockey’s son Sean), Another Long Week opens with keyboards flourish on ‘Bone Marrow’, a strummed mid-tempo love song (“If you come unstuck/I’ll be your glue/And I’ll be your Saturday night/If you want me to…”) that observes “Poverty can/Strip the marrow from your bones/And money has a habit/Of breaking a home” as he offers “Why don’t you let/Me give you marrow from my bones/Can hold you together/ With my chromosomes”, a song that carries a poignant irony given his failing health as a recovered drug addict and alcoholic.

A similar sentiment informs the plangent guitars, Scottish-tinted swayalong ‘Lighthouse’ (“When you feel you’ve been broken/By the pure hate of mankind/And you can’t turn life’s light on/My lighthouse of hope you will find/It will shine its light on you”), things turning slightly poppier balladry for ‘Lemon Dip’, a memory of lost childhood connections (“Used to be enough/Just us holding hands/Playing hopscotch/Next to the/Ice-cream van…Seasons started to change/Distance started to grow/We broke each other hearts/And let each other go/But I always see your face/When I feel a certain smell/So know in your heart/I keep those memories well”) and how it “All comes down to/How you walk down/Life’s Boulevard”.

A punchier track with a swaying rhythm and growly guitars, a Tribute to Sinead O’Connor, ‘Pop Queen’ turns to the gulf between the public person and the private face of success (“When the world loves you so/It’s hard to tell the truth”) and the lies you present to the world (“You wear Versace shoes/Hide the holes in your socks/Pretending your loving this life/But I know you’re sly as a fox/And when you’re standing naked/The one thing you can’t hide/No matter how great your headline/On quicksand you’re gonna slide”), the lines “Here lies a pop queen/Who never found fortitude/When they carve your headstone/Don’t let these words ring true/Here lies a pop queen/Taken far too soon” packing an emotive heft.

Keeping the sound big and dynamic, ‘Scuffed Knees’ (which feels more Ray Davies than Dury), again muses on the past (in particular his childhood in the slums of Finsbury Park, and south London concrete jungle of Roundshaw estate) and not letting life grind down your dreams (“Sitting on the doorstep/Knees so badly scuffed/Tears washed away our blood/Those days seemed so tough/Rode off into the sunset/Dreams beneath the hood/Hope washed away our fears…Sam said man change is gonna come/You can change the tides/But never the sun/A frown is a smile/Worn upside down/The true king never/Shows off his crown”).

Pedal steel adding colour to melodic sway, ‘Verse 2’ is a wistful reflection on a relationship drifting apart (“every day I know grow older/As every day you seem to grow colder/But I’ll never forget the very first time/I held you close said you was mine/Felt the magic of our very first kiss/First time ever my heart beat missed”), borrowing a line from Gwyneth Paltrow in “Used to say we were the win double/Now you say we should consciously uncouple” as “everything I thought was magic/Turns out to be cosmetically plastic”. And there’s many a celebrity who’ll sympathise when he sings “Now you’ve called in Ray Tooth/To take my car and my roof/You managed to get my royalties frozen”.

Featuring, as you might imagine, strings, ‘First Violin’, another song of support (“if you need more oxygen/I will fill your lungs with air/And if you feel loneliness/Reach for me and I’ll be there”) with ‘if I was’ lyrics is a particular highpoint, spinning out its metaphor to fine effect in “If I was an orchestra/Then you’d be first violin/And if I was redemption/You’d be my holy sin… And if you were an opera/I will be your final scene”.

Taken at a more slow pace with fast flourishes, pedal steel and jangly guitars, ‘Rain In Indiana’ may seem downbeat (“The chains you can’t unshackle/Is the pain that makes a man buckle/It’s hard to kill with kindness/When hatred lives with violence”) but finds hope of salvation in country music, the resilience of the savanna and “the bible instead of the gun”.

The location shifts for the twanged country of ‘Walked To Albuquerque’, another love song with a lyrical snap (“Never break your windows/Unless to rescue you”), keeping the energy on the boil for ‘Punching Ball’ which puts a different spin on being there for someone, cautioning “Don’t ever think you know me/Coz you don’t really know me at all/Don’t ever try and break me/Coz my stone broke all the rules” but balancing that with “I’ll be your/Punching ball/And take your blows/When you fall down/And hurt yourself”.

It hits the home stretch with pedal steel leading ‘Fluorescent Blue’ , a song he describes as the angriest on the album, fuelled by the hate, religious division and environmental damage in the world, but is actually a positive statement about not turning your back on Mother Earth (as Sparks put it) as he declares “The way I live my life/Is the way I want to die/My back to the sun/And bigger than the sky/Saving dandelions./And daffodils/Turning wastelands/In to green valley hills”.

Given his health, it’s no surprise to find a track touching on mortality, here in the defiance of the penultimate classic anthemic pub rock of ‘Through Your Eyes’ (“I ain’t afraid of dying/One thing in life that I know/When we walk through life’s door/Some point it’s gotta close …Spent all my life in shadows/And I learnt how to hedge my bets/Honesty brings its own rewards/Can’t spend them though on regrets/So please god help me/Make it home tonight/I wanna see the love of/My baby’s eyes”).

It ends with a co-write of sorts with Springsteen, in as much that Wills laces piano ballad ‘Do You Dream An Ordinary Life’ with phrases (words and melodies) from his songs, opening with “Dreamt I saw you there/We were racing in the streets/We drove down thunder road/Where the river bend it meets/We watched Mary swim/The tides of jungleland” (albeit “the chimes of freedom rang/For the curse of the working man” also owes a debt to Bob), going on to reference ‘Born To Run’, Streets Of Philadelphia’, ‘Because The Night’ and others, a hymn to the power of music to bring sooth the savage breast as he ends “Here’s from me to you/For the soundtrack of my life/Where the pen and guitar/Always blunts the knife”. To quote from an old Ewan McGregor film title, Wills’ music and Another Long Week in particular are testaments to a life less ordinary.

Mike Davies - www.folking.com