"Shine" by Luke Concannon with Darius Christian

The singles are coming in a bit of a deluge from Luke Concannon & Darius Christian: you can hardly have finished getting your head around "Stick Together" and now "Shine" is here for you.

I'm still struggling to process the rhetoric coming from the supposedly left of centre government whom I naively voted for which in recent days has included preparing for war against a vastly more powerful nation, building multiple attack submarines while cutting benefits to the most vulnerable & launching an offensive on inclusion & diversity: two central ideas to what I strive towards. Since Luke and Darius are US based, I shudder to think that their experiences must be even more traumatic.

I therefore especially admire them for their optimistic and rousing continued approach to music making: it is now even more defiant: not necessarily in its own terms (Luke adopted this position a long time ago) but because the context has got so much worse. I think the more the world moves away from their ideas, the more they feel that they wish & need to counteract the dynamics of intolerance & selfishness. It's worth remembering too that Luke self-defines as an activist: his songs are not disconnected commercial artefacts nor even sad observations. They are purposeful exhortations to rise up and challenge contemporary norms.

It would be trite to call them a "two person crusade" as part of their approach is predicated on their knowledge that they are far from alone: they are speaking to kindred spirits, albeit ones battered by current political trends which try & break community.

Luke says of "Shine" that it is "…about the need to play, let loose and connect" and he also  hopes that you can dance. Connection is key here: it's central to these songs the pair are producing at the moment  (the previous one was of course named "Stick Together") and is neatly illustrated by Luke's continuing joy of small, intimate (packed) performances and his (ever since I first saw him) habit of abandoning his starting spot to wander playing amongst his audience: to be as one with them.

They are not however dogmatic, puritanical ideologues: that "dance" element is also vital and it is clear that any vision of community includes the sharing of joy as well as defeating negativity. 

Music has an incredibly long & honourable tradition of sustaining even the most oppressed of cultures (if you've not yet read Joe Boyd's comprehensive "And the Roots of Rhythm Remain" then I strong advise you too: quite apart from tracing musical threads, this theme reoccurs so many times in so many places) and thankfully "Shine" and similar songs are not (yet) illegal is this country nor the USA (I bet you can't play it in some sad states though) and so we must hope that its sentiments bear fruit before the malign powers clamp down further.

The big problem I suspect is balance. Luke & Darius want to accentuate positives & help us life ourselves, but too jaunty a song & they'd run the danger of looking like they might be trivialising the pressures people have to deal with: too solemn on the other hand and we'd not get that boost.  I think they are very alert to this and a clue as to how they've reconciled this may lie in Luke's comment that it ".. might be the best thing we've put out yet..". A case of a challenge met perhaps? The inspiration apparently comes from sitting in a friend's garden (the activist Deborah Frieze) in Boston (I get the impression that all Luke's songs nowadays have an outdoor genesis) and reflecting on ways to re-energise her in the wake of overwork: so it can be extended to any situation of stress and anxiety and seeking a remedy for this: keep it simple, acknowledge the problem and move straight towards a solution.

When I say "simple" that's me being relative of course. Darius brings so much to Luke's music in terms of arrangements and extra instrumentation but he also deserves a medal for following his idiosyncratic structures and bringing the most out of them.

"Shine" is pretty much the most overtly commercial of this run of singles and probably could reach the largest audience and so bring them within their embrace. Possibly the best bass part to grace a Luke song since Nizlopi days, wonderful, fresh brass parts which dance adeptly past the predictable and female backing vocals which add more joy to the mix. I'm totally happy to endorse Luke's analysis of its place in their growing body of work. It has all it needs to do well which in turn means more people will hear it, dance to it, feel cheered up & embrace each other. Which is why they made it of course.

At the danger of seeming a bit precious, I'd like to end with a quote by Andy Morgan, manager of the Tuareg band Tinariwen as firstly I came across it while writing this piece & secondly because it seemed so apt in relation to what Luke & Darius are striving for.  "Music expands the heart's capacity. It can make emotional connections across barren distances and frontiers of culture and language. It can create empathy where none would otherwise exist".