Fingers In My Pocket by Robin Auld

The sessions for “Fingers in my pocket” took place in Chiswick, London in late 2010.

An eclectic mix of blues and roots songs, it features the talents of long time collaborator and world beat drummer Barry van Zyl and Aussie producer/bass player Simon Horn. In keeping with Auld’s more recent albums, click tracks and studio cut and paste were dispensed with, the bass, drums and rhythm tracks all going down with minimum rehearsal. The second take seemed to be the right one in most cases!

The new album signifies a slight shift in focus for Auld, in that instead of a singer/songwriter album where the instrumentation is secondary to the song, on “Fingers” the guitar playing, singing and general musicianship steps to the fore.

Tapping into the guitar playing side of Auld’s music, the album recalls the days before he started singing, when he played as sideman in various seminal Cape Town bands.

“I wanted the songs to be like comfy furniture”, explains Auld…”something that people could relax into and that I could stretch out on.”

The recent world wide recession and the irony of banking credit checks form the basis of the title track, and the whole album carries a dustbowl humour regarding the loss of both love and money. But while the lyrical themes are certainly blues-based, the African influences are never far away.

“I didn’t want to write an album of stock twelve bar and shuffle stuff” he says. “The blues should be a constantly evolving thing. What’s interesting to me is mixing the trad forms with world influences.”

This is especially apparent on songs like “Porgy’s Lament”, which on the surface is a rock blues ballad from the Led Zeppelin textbook. The orchestrated solo, however, goes into the African choral voicings and falling tones more likely to be heard on an Abdullah Ibrahim recording.

Similarly, while the guitar tremolo is something usually heard dive bombing on rock records, Auld subtly uses it on “No fish today” to conjure the feel of a Cape Malay brass section.

More traditional songs such as “That’s too bad” feature Auld’s blues harmonica playing, which he favours clean and sans distortion. Acoustic slide guitar slices through the country-funk of Charlene, and Skunk Baxter type strat riffing plays through the blues pop of “Car Trouble”

“In the bay again” wanders into Tom Wait’s territory, with Van Zyl’s Salvation Army bass drum underpinning the story of a small town return, and the slow minor blues funk of “Since I caught on” features a guitar solo that manages to convey emotion without a hint of pyrotechnics.

A varied and musically adventurous collection of songs, described by Robin as “yer basic got them walkin’, credit card, institutional failure, mean women and a sore head blues again” type of album!