I find that once I've gotten hooked on an artist, waiting to hear more from them can turn me into a junkie waiting for a fix. I think about it in between every other thought. I am deep into that process with Johnny Flynn.
He's a weird artist, just hearing him you wouldn't picture a skinny blonde British kid with a beat up face. He plays guitar with a heavy dose of soul so it feels every time like he's gonna suck me into a smoky jazz club 80 years ago. And then the fiddle on the song comes up and I die a little every time. He has this ragged, strained voice that feels like it belongs to someone much older. You know those stupid talented people in your life that do "a little bit of everything" but everything they do is perfect? This guy routinely walks onstage with five different instruments and plays them so well and with so much finesse that he seems to stream the music out of his hands and into the thing he's playing. And then his lyrics read like a damn Shakespeare play. It's surreal.
So as I sit in my bed coughing and sick for the second week I'm finding that the most soothing thing I have is not the bottles of cough medicine (Although you better believe I am clocking my doses of that just like my mama taught me) it's the album Been Listening. Generally speaking I'm more drawn to the lilting folk he put into his debut album A Larum, but there comes a time when you gotta strap in for the changing of the seasons. Johnny's second album follows a winding range of emotions that always reminds me of one of the studio musicals from the 40s. Start with an upbeat kick, move in to the deeper more stirring song, ect. The whole emotional spectrum is accounted for. Four songs in Been Listening rolls in like a tide as the lyrics speak to music's relationship with time. "The music's gone the music's dead/The music left and in its stead/A single song, a chorus strong/A symphony sans right or wrong" Oof. If you haven't heard this kid yet, check him out and then buy everything he's got to offer.
He's a weird artist, just hearing him you wouldn't picture a skinny blonde British kid with a beat up face. He plays guitar with a heavy dose of soul so it feels every time like he's gonna suck me into a smoky jazz club 80 years ago. And then the fiddle on the song comes up and I die a little every time. He has this ragged, strained voice that feels like it belongs to someone much older. You know those stupid talented people in your life that do "a little bit of everything" but everything they do is perfect? This guy routinely walks onstage with five different instruments and plays them so well and with so much finesse that he seems to stream the music out of his hands and into the thing he's playing. And then his lyrics read like a damn Shakespeare play. It's surreal.
So as I sit in my bed coughing and sick for the second week I'm finding that the most soothing thing I have is not the bottles of cough medicine (Although you better believe I am clocking my doses of that just like my mama taught me) it's the album Been Listening. Generally speaking I'm more drawn to the lilting folk he put into his debut album A Larum, but there comes a time when you gotta strap in for the changing of the seasons. Johnny's second album follows a winding range of emotions that always reminds me of one of the studio musicals from the 40s. Start with an upbeat kick, move in to the deeper more stirring song, ect. The whole emotional spectrum is accounted for. Four songs in Been Listening rolls in like a tide as the lyrics speak to music's relationship with time. "The music's gone the music's dead/The music left and in its stead/A single song, a chorus strong/A symphony sans right or wrong" Oof. If you haven't heard this kid yet, check him out and then buy everything he's got to offer.
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