Review Summary: Ghedi and the Hot Rods
‘Wasteland’ is an album I’ve been anticipating for a while now, one that articulates the instinctive gut reactions of an Englishman returning home to a country he can no longer recognise (in this case coming back to dilapidated Yorkshire after time spent in Dublin), and one that specifically gets to the heart of the perverse and dispiriting identity crisis being suffered by the UK right now. Straight away the album title and artwork worked well together, strongly hinting that this topic would be Ghedi’s focus here, and so it proved. The music contained within easily lived up to my expectations, with unflinching lyrics paired with a near apocalyptic downcast, but still unbowed, atmosphere. This style, where traditional folk is given an experimental twist, has found an audience recently with bands like Lankum, but here the approach feels all the more full blooded and simply epic.
I’m somewhat surprised at this turn of events because Ghedi has always been an artist I had marked down as a predictable and mostly understated operator; Jim ‘my middle name is Steady’ Ghedi if you will. He peddled a combo of instrumental American primitivism inspired guitar and low key folk numbers, some adapted from traditional works, laudable but also unremarkable for the most part. This album is quite different and feels like 'risk after risk’ by comparison, with distorted and/or down tuned electric guitar being added to the mix. It was acknowledged early on in the recordings that there was an obvious need for more power this time, and that this in turn meant the vocals would need to be changed up to span their full range if they were to stand out against this more intense backing. The upshot is that the album ushers in the never heard before Ghedi falsetto and I have to admit I thought he’d brought in a guest vocalist to open the album when I first heard the new singing style. Beyond these changes you also have some atypical full force melodies mixed into the writing, some of which are so big and bright Ghedi needed the reassurance of others to hold faith in incorporating them.
The most obvious example of this new melodic palette is the chorus of the phenomenal title track, the first real epic of the set that’s positioned at track four, and marked the moment the album really sunk its claws in on my first run through. The next big surprise is the intro to ‘Sheaf & Feld’ that comes in like the sort of discordant, near white noise burst, you’d have found on the Tindersticks debut; another powerful experiment that in terms of the man’s previous material seems to have come from out of nowhere. Further ‘big’ sounding numbers arrive in the form of the rippling, soaring ‘Hester’ and the sweeping crescendos and ‘medieval vibes’ of the penultimate ‘Wishing Tree’; I can’t imagine that this material won’t rank among some of the best folk aligned music released this year. Speaking of which, the more typical and traditional songs are also strong here, with the cutting ‘What Will become of England’ and closing anti-war tirade ‘Trafford Road Ballad’ packed with atmosphere thanks to the choice of instrumentation and impassioned vocal delivery. The four part harmony of ‘Seasons’ makes room for Amelia Baker from Cinder Well, Cormac mac Diarmada from Lankum, and Ruth Clinton from Landless to raise their voices and provide some company for Ghedi among the ruins.
‘Wasteland’ will forever be one of those albums to benefit from a perfect first listen for me; I pressed play on a Friday afternoon at the exact moment I stepped through the gates of Richmond Park, and it accompanied me through the three miles it took to get to the other side. It was one of those English days where you seem to experience all types of weather within a single hour, in this case thick cloud, a light gale, and breaks of beautiful winter’s sunshine. As I left the beaten path to look for a place to take an al fresco urination I half expected to see a reclined member of a former ruling class, dressed like Lord Byron, recently awoken and confused propped against the trunk of an ancient oak - like an exhibit in Westworld, mostly shielded from the horrors of the age by the timeless surrounds of this deer strewn royal park. I’d like to imagine the cardboard cutout current leader of Great Britain, Sir 'Keith' Starmer, would listen to this music and a single tear would roll down his cheek…and he wouldn’t quite know exactly why that was.
