CD Odyssey Disc 1174: Johnny Flynn

I hope you will forgive my brevity, dear reader, for I am not well. I have some kind of throat infection robbing me of my vitality. I’d hoped to go to the clinic today but apparently showing up at a clinic at 1:45 is too late in the day in these troubled times. Argh. I went back to work instead, which I’m almost certain is not the correct treatment for whatever I have.

Anyway, I may try again tomorrow but for now let’s see if I can get through a music review. Aah, writing…my mental pilot light. May it always be the last faculty to fail me.

Disc 1174 is… A Larum

Artist: Johnny Flynn

Year of Release: 2008

What’s up with the Cover? A figure crosses a snowy field in front of what looks like some old and abandoned passenger cars of some kind. Is it just me or does the figure’s head kind of look like it’s part of the painting on the passenger car? Weird…

How I Came To Know It: This was on my oft-referenced “Best 100 Indie Folk Albums” from Paste Magazine. “A Larum” came in at #85 and left an impression.

Then it became impossible to find. I bought Flynn’s 2017 release “Sillion” (reviewed back at Disc 1136) as a consolation prize but still couldn’t find the now out of print “A Larum”. Finally, a couple years later my persistent searching paid off when a used copy showed up in local record store “Ditch”.

How It Stacks Up:  I have two Johnny Flynn albums and I saved top spot for this one but now that I’m here I must admit…I prefer Sillion. That puts “A Larum” into second.

Ratings: 3 stars

Not to be confused with sixties rocker Johnny Kidd and the Pirates – as my wife is wont to playfully do – Johnny Flynn is a South African/English indie folk singer. I have an unfounded suspicion that he is a critical darling although you wouldn’t know it from his lack of commercial success (“A Larum” is one of three albums he’s charted with, coming in at a less than vaunted #98).

Not that charting ever mattered to great music. If it did, you could take over half my collection and turf it into the sea. Don’t do that though – it would be environmentally irresponsible. Also, I like my uncharted gems. Maybe they shine only for me, but it makes the shine that much more lustrous. But I digress…

How does “A Larum” hold up in the Land of Uncharted Gems? Not bad.

Flynn has a sing-songy style that makes you feel like you could encounter him walking down some backwoods English path where he sings to birds and birch trees. He isn’t a vocal powerhouse, but he knows how to match that sing-song style to sparse and whimsical arrangements. The guitar playing is light on strum, heavy on fancy picking, and takes a back seat to the stories that Flynn trills out.

Unfortunately, despite listening to this album four times sequentially over the last four days I often find my mind wandering when I listen. I catch snippets of evocative images like these from “Sally”:

“I’m a plow and you’re a furrow

I’m a fox and you’re a burrow”

Or this from “The Wrote & the Writ”:

“What of all those wayward priests?
The ones who like to drink
Do you suppose they'd swap their blood for wine
Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink.”

When I read the lyrics back online it all makes sense and there are even larger stories within, but there is something in Johnny Flynn’s voice that makes it hard to focus on the developing plot. Instead, like the songs, you trip along like a butterfly to the next flower. It is pleasant, but it didn’t have the emotional gravitas I like in my folk music.

The one exception is “Tunnels” another whimsical hand-picked number about how we are all damaged, trying to repair the holes in our lives even as we dig new ones in the process. The song jumps and skips, but the darkness at the core remains strong. I kind of welcomed that darkness, but maybe that’s just the fevered cough talking.

Anyway, I’d ask this record to slow down and take itself more seriously, but Flynn has obviously decided to do serious at a gallop, and who am I to tell him different. This is good stuff that challenges you to pay close attention and rewards you if you do. At least I assume it would.

Now food and a blanket.

Best tracks: The Wrote & the Writ, Sally, Tunnels