Album review: Paul Clarvis, Liam Noble, Cathy Jordan - Freight Train

Paul Clarvis (drums); Liam Noble (piano, synthesisers); Cathy Jordan (voice, strumming, bodhran, bones)

This album is another legacy of lockdown in that it is partly a recording of a distanced gig that the trio undertook as part of a commission for Jazz West Midlands. The original concert of quirky and original tunes is available for your viewing pleasure here on YouTube.

Of the three members of the trio, Jordan is a new name on me, possibly as she comes into the trio from a folk background, but both Clarvis and Noble are on several albums in my collection and I especially like The Long Game, (not least for its great cover), Noble’s 2019 album on Edition Records.

Freight Train turns the quirky up to max. I would say that the influence that shines through most prominently is that of Tom Waits after he left Asylum Records and launched himself into a jungle of heavier percussion and off-centre piano. That move didn’t work for me on his records but, thankfully it does here, probably because Cathy Jordan sings whilst Tom just growled. The opener, Dear Someone, exemplifies this. It opens with a simple piano figure from a beginner’s class before Jordan comes in. She has a lovely voice but when she finishes singing the piano becomes more disjointed and Clarvis throws in some oddly thumping drums. It actually works.

After the next four tracks it becomes apparent that this is a game of two halves. The tracks recorded as part of the lockdown session are more challenging that those recorded in the studio in January this year. The former includes a reading of Mood Indigo but not like Duke ever did it. This time Jordan definitely wins the battle with her lovely soaring voice over a music hall rhythm. Others from that first session include Truly Scrumptious, from the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which again is deconstructed so that Jordan’s voice is pitched against a squealing synthesiser and rattling drums. By contrast, Isle of Innisfree is a straighter reading. There’s a hum (on synthesiser?) down in the mix but piano and drums largely serve the song.

There are four Mose Allison songs on the album and all come from the studio session. If You’re Going to the City is a rolling blues like Mose would have done himself. Paul Clarvis was the late Leonard Bernstein’s favourite percussionist in London and he and Noble convey the perfect combination of tragedy and hope on a stark rendition of Bernstein’s Somewhere from West Side Story.

Again, the contrast between Jordan’s full voice and the barrenness of the backing comes through on Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do. Rolling drums and tumbling piano notes suggest that there’s a hole where the bass player is supposed to be. This is of course entirely deliberate and is less of an omission than it might appear on stage IRL.

The two closers are both Mose Allison tunes. A quick swinging blast through Top 40 is followed by, the more melancholic country waltz, Was. These are both from the 2022 studio session as is the title track, a train blues, which sounds like it should be sung in a saloon in the mid-west in the 1880s, in front of a posse of dancing girls. A lovely rendition of Nick Lowe’s The Beast in Me is also worth a mention for Jordan’s soulful voice.

I’m not sure how to summarise this album. It feels like the winter blues but its frivolity and irreverence also herald better times ahead. I suppose that’s a reflection of the recording process for this one. If you want to find it in the shops, I suspect that it will be, in Gil Scott-Heron’s explanation of where to find his albums, “at the back of the shop in the box marked ‘Miscellaneous.’”*

Points too for Bill Henderson’s cover painting which could be a companion piece to Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed, but from below. Dave Sayer

 * Just been informed that it is only available via Bandcamp or at gigs.