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Martin Newell
A Summer Tamarind
Cherry Red
After a brief dalliance with jazz on 2004's The Light Programme, Britain's best songwriter since Ray Davies returns to form. A Summer Tamarind finds Martin Newell doing what he does best: crafting clever, very British, sophisticated pop, with chiming guitars and spot-on harmonies. But A Summer Tamarind isn’t all just clever stuff…there's quite a bit of heart as well.
On the opener, our hero seems to be bouncing back from adversity – the optimistic "Another Sunny Day" invites us to "kick that golden football" at our sorrow, then segues into the gorgeous, mostly instrumental, "St. Audrey's Fair". That's followed by a trip to "Mulberry Harbour," which is familiar Newell territory indeed, recalling the Kinks' "Dead End Street", but this is the other side of town (over by "Tuscany Row"), where an upwardly-mobile couple works out at the gym and comes home to a bottle of pinot! It’s wonderfully scathing.
The next track is "This Flamingo"...and here's where the heart comes in...One of the best songs Newell’s ever written, and that's saying a lot. This is my pick for the single. Every bit as powerful as "She Was Never Drowning", a favorite from 1995's The Off White Album. It’s magnificent. The mood lightens with "Wow! Look at That Old Man". Martin Newell doing 50's doo wop? Why not? It’s a fantastic portrait of the artist "speeding on a bicycle with grey hair flying" through the East Anglian countryside.
"Stella and Charlie got married" bounces along... this could've been on the Small Faces' Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. I'm not quite sure what Stella and Charlie got up to, but they're "coming up for trial on the seventh of May". Next, the centerpiece: "You Made it Rain". Like "This Flamingo", it’s just a lead vocal and strumming for the most part, genius arrangement, another heartbreaker that'll stop you in your tracks. How can you beat a couplet like, "worlds were washed away/empires i saw in your eyes every day"? This is the kind of thing that makes you realize you are listening to as good a songwriter as there simply ever was. Why is this guy unknown??
The title track follows “You Made it Rain” and lightens the mood once again – you can even dance to this one. A pinch of bossa nova, along with the tamarind, turns out to be just the ingredient needed. "Golden Afternoon", drenched in 12 string Rickenbacker, demands to know why we can't look back through rose colored glasses.
"Cinnamon Blonde" is radio ready for the USA (as his "Mercury Girl" was in the 80's), and shows off Newell’s trademark vibrato vocal. The album closes with a quiet sort of waltz a la Ziggy's "Rock n' Roll Suicide" – it's called “Dawn Smile”, and it contains the curious word, caravanserai (an inn surrounding a court in eastern countries where caravans rest at night). Now how many songwriters have you tapping your feet, nodding your head and looking up words in the dictionary at the same time? It’s an exquisite finale to a masterful collection of tracks.
A Summer Tamarind gets my vote for best album of 2007 and easily ranks among Newell's finest. it's his middle age masterpiece.
INTERNET
www.martinnewell.co.uk/
www.cherryred.co.uk
www.jarmusic.com
DICOGRAPHY
Compiled from www.martinnewell.co.uk and www.allmusic.com.
Includes EPs, LPs, live albums and compilations only.
LP
Songs for a Fallow Land
The Greatest Living Englishman
The Off White Album
Wild Man of Wivenhoe and Black Shuck
The Spirit Cage
Radio Autumn Attic
The Light Programme
A Summer Tamarind
EP
The April Fool
Let’s Kiosk
Songs From the Station Hotel
New Europeans
Live
The Black Sessions
Live at the Greyhound
Compilations
The Wayward Genius of Martin Newell
Box of Old Humbug
with The Stray Trolleys
Barricades and Angels
with The Cleaners From Venus
LP
Blow Away Your Troubles
Midnight Cleaners
Secret Dreams of a Kitchen Porter
On Any Normal Monday
In the Golden Autumn
Under Wartime Conditions
Living With Victoria Grey
Going to England
Town & Country
Number Thirteen
EP
Mind How You Go!
The April Fool
Live
Live in Japan
Live 1987
Compilations
Living With Victoria Grey (the very best of…)
My Back Wages (rarities)
Don’t Step on my Rainbow
Back From the Cleaners
Golden Cleaners
Winter
with The Brotherhood of Lizards
The Brotherhood of Lizards
Lizardland
—Don Ciccone
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