Colin Pollock

From time to time an album just sits at the edge of your vision; you listen to it – enjoy it – but can’t work out what there is about that you like so you set it aside for a later look. And then you listen again – still enjoying – but still struggling to really work out the artist or the music. And time passes and you find that every time you have some free time to just listen to some music and relax this album that you really couldn’t work out is the first one to hand and it soon assumes a place as ‘Something Special’.
“Long Gone” is one of those.
It is simply an album of terrific songs, played beautifully and with all the heartfelt soul and love you could wish for.

Pollock claims the influence of JJ Cale and Bob Dylan as well as Richard Thompson and Mark Knopfler and you can hear elements of all of those but he has a very singular ability to make his own music and not just copy the rest.

This comes under the banner of Americana but it is a very English Americana - ‘It’s A Drag’ has a pedal steel playing as he speaks/sings “Heh barman, got a light for this fag?” – and he tells stories that are essentially British rather than American but could be universal as well.

Pollock plays a beautiful gentle and purely picked guitar and his husky vocals have a world-weary air about them but the air of happy reminiscence underlines it – very Dire Straits in that regard – while the musicians play an intense but sympathetic role to allow the song to be the star and not the playing.

The subject matters are varied: love lost and love held over time; test pilots and end-of-the-pier comedians; Martin Luther King and his road; and all the songs carry the gentle intensity of each other but you can take any song in isolation and it will stand up as a delightful musical moment.

This isn’t an album to batter you with its immediacy but over a few listens it works its way under your skin – a sleeper masterpiece.