Hard to believe it’s almost ten years since the Belfast troubadour departed these shores for pastures new; first to live in rural Switzerland, followed by a more permanent move to Australia where he’s currently based. A regular visitor back home, on his own version of the never-ending tour, he’s managed to maintain a small but loyal audience mainly through hard graft and a prodigious output. As befits a man who rarely lets the grass grow under his feet for very long this full band affair was recorded in locations as diverse as Alaska, Italy, the UK and his new hometown of Melbourne. But despite the geographical confusion that might cause it’s a surprisingly cohesive-sounding record, albeit one with some ambitious arrangements.
‘Message To You’ has a Talking Heads-like rhythmic drone with soulful backing vocals, while the dreamy, trance-like ‘Waiting For You’ is similarly styled with a syncopated beat punctuated by staccato strings.
Even more experimental, ‘Letter From T’ features what sounds like one side of a telephone conversation with a spooky female voice over an Indian raga.
Never one to miss out on a literary reference, ‘Samuel Beckett’ which also namechecks Seamus Heaney and Oscar Wilde faintly echoes his earlier song ‘Looking For James Joyce’s Grave’. However, melodic, mid-tempo love songs such as ‘You Walked Back Into My Heart’ are arguably what White does best and that along with the jangly ‘A Long Time Coming’ and ‘Gallery Girls’ – another tuneful ditty with wry observational lyrics – will appeal most to long-time fans.