Album Review: Sam Morton, Daffodils & Dirt

“Sam Morton isn’t me,” singer, songwriter, acclaimed actor and director Samantha Morton points out, “it’s the band’s name, we’re a duo.” The other half of the duo being Richard Russell, record producer and head buck cat of XL Recordings. On the surface, it’s an unlikely collaboration, one that was begat when the twice-Oscar nominated Morton appeared on Desert Island Discs and Russell happened to be listening.

Struck by the tracks she chose – including UB4O, Spiritualized, The Dubliners, Suicide and Molly Drake – and the way the music weaved through her life experiences, he made contact. Well done, Richard. Daffodils & Dirt is that rarest of gems – a fiercely original record which just happens to be wrapped in the grooviest record sleeve this year.

It features an archive photograph from acclaimed visual artist Nick Waplington, who documented life on Nottingham’s Broxtowe Estate, when Morton was growing up there in the mid-1980s.

As for the music – oh man, there is so much boss stuff on this record. There’s the filthy, furious wording on ‘Hunger Hill Road’ jarring against its lullaby soundscape. The claustrophobic gulp for breath that kicks off the electronic folk psalm of ‘Purple Yellow’. The trip-hop inflected cover of Johnny Ray’s ‘Little White Cloud That Cried’. The mighty production chops on ‘Cry Without End’. Ditto ‘Let’s Walk In The Night’.

Then there’s Richard Russell making superb rave music, just like he used to, on ‘Double Dip Neon’. And finally, and perhaps most wonderfully, UB40’s Ali Campbell’s sprinkling of fairy dust on ‘Broxtowe Girl’. A desert island disc, indeed.

OUT NOW