Gold Has Worn Away

Benji Kirkpatrick is a founder member of big-band folk trailblazers Bellowhead and a current member of Faustus, but he is also an unabashed fan of the classic power trio format, as exemplified by his love of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He has been writing and cooking up plans for his own project over the last couple of years, even making a solo album with the self-explanatory title Hendrix Songs. Here, he takes on vocals, bouzoukis, guitars, mandolin, banjo and piano, aided and abetted by ex-Bellowhead percussionist Pete Flood and bass player extraordinaire Pete Tomas.

A collection of contemporary folk-rock songs rather than the aural assault threatened by their group name, Gold Has Worn Away is, now and again, a little more leaden than golden and ‘A Classic Cut’ should never have made the cut. But when it does work, it's robust and energetic. Lyrically, a song like ‘Hiring Fair’ about the plight of the working man might have come from almost any time, while ‘Human Cost’ and ‘Valley of Green’ address such tragically topical subjects as forced migration and looming environmental disaster. Later there's a shift to more personal lost love songs with ‘Back to the Fold’ and ‘Fill My Heart’, and even a slight return to his main man's ‘Foxy Lady’ with the instrumental ‘Got to Be All Mine’.