Home Recordings

Simpson was scheduled to deliver a live album this year. Instead, he went home, found a room, pressed record, and with stray accompaniment from a gaggle of geese and assorted birdsong, laid down these 14 intimate recordings, just voice and guitar, slide and banjo.

It’s familiar Simpson territory, a mix of Americana and Anglicana, roots music gently delivered, sometimes carrying sharp messages in its contours. The opening Lyle Lovett

song, ‘Family Reserve’, is a busy and entertaining narrative about death, while the brief banjo instrumental, ‘Lonesome Valley Geese’, bears a stray vocal featuring some passing feathered friends. Folk song ‘Deliah’ is a highlight, and there are fine covers of the late John Prine’s ‘Angel from Montgomery’ and Robin Williamson’s ‘October Song’ (from The Incredible String Band’s 1966 debut). ‘Plains of Waterloo’ revisits June Tabor’s 1976 album Airs and Graces, while ‘Admiral Benbow’ is drawn from their 1980 classic, A Cut Above. The whitewater banjo of ‘House Carpenter’ speeds us all down to hell, while ‘The Times They are a-Changin’’ does what it does, as well as proving that when the world’s changed beyond comprehension, it’s still Dylan who expresses that the best.