'Midnight Bloom' by Luke Concannon with Darius Christian
Review
Out now is Luke Concannon's follow-up up album to the acclaimed 2021 release ‘Ecstatic Bird in the Burning', namely ‘Midnight Bloom'.
However I must emphasise straight away that, like so many of his recent singles, the set represents fruits of his collaboration with multi instrumentalist Darius Christian.
In fact you'll recognise the names of many old friends as "What Would You Change", "I Wanna Dance With You", "Stick Together" and "Brother" (which also appears on ‘Hot Music Live Presents Volume Thirteen') are all present and correct on this album.
Joining them now are "A Woman Is Sacred", "Namaste" and "Romy" which you'll be less familiar with unless you have caught him live on his recent UK tour or online.
Since these songs have been coming out since 2022, they represent not only a significant phase in Luke's artistic career but also one which has been involved so much of his time to perfect.
If I'm being honest, had I been asked to bet either (a) which artist I review regularly will come up with songs entitled "A Woman Is Sacred" or "Namaste" or (b) to predict potential Luke song titles, these two would have been contenders as archetypal of his area of emotional & spiritual interest which inspire his writing. Oh to have such an intensity & consistency of personal commitment and the capacity to articulate them via highly individualistic writing.
Luke has been endowed with such a clear and personal creative identity for so very long now (I bet record companies would describe it as a "brand" but for such an anti-materialist artist I won't offend him by using the term): it must represent a major part of his attraction to his audience.
Another is of course his capacity to devise very accessible songs which paradoxically are composed of weird chords, structures and time signature. This era though is distinguished by having the very close collaboration of Darius enabling his songs to gain interesting & arresting arrangements which never take attention away from the heart of the songs themselves.
"Romy" is a bit of a masterclass in how to be a top writer. Starting off with just Luke and a guitar, you think it's going to be a nod back to his roots until the most gorgeous arrangement suddenly kicks in (involving woodwind & female harmonies) to seize you in pleasant surprise. Nice work. Its tale of ecstatic love must surely be deeply personal except Luke's wife has another name & their child is a son not a daughter. I imagine that this is a prime example of a writer informing a song with his own truth but then evolving it from the specific to the universal so many others can identify with it.
"Namaste" is another story song whose narrative seems at odds with his current emotional circumstances so again picking out where the personal elements are (and I decline to believe that Luke ever writes a song without having gone through or closely observed the feelings within it) is a bit elusive but then exploring the layers & depths of his finely wrought songs is part of the pleasure. The intensity of the words & delivery can't be missed though I think there is a pun in operation here which suggests that he is keen to let a little light in.
"A Woman Is Sacred" is a revelation in that it's a female lead vocal on a Luke Concannon song (I'd be awfully surprised to learn that it was anyone other than that of his wife Stephanie Hollenberg) and quite apart from the notion of introducing a diversity of sound (he does pretty well in that respect at the best of times though not perhaps to the extremity of someone else singing his songs). For once his own voice takes a definite back seat until the last three quarters of a minute when he responds to the manifesto we've been listening to.
To put out a song based upon the perspective of a woman is, as I suggested earlier, not a huge surprise in considering Luke but presenting it in this way certainly validates the sentiments and avoids the pitfall of being accessed of being patronising. Since every one of his songs might be a single (his level of craft excludes filler) it's an easy thing to say about any of them, but in my opinion, "A Woman Is Sacred" would make a very fine one indeed.
I am confident that in many ways Luke is in a really good place now personally & creatively and I rejoice for him. However he has always tended to accentuate the positive & optimistic in what he writes: that's always been his philosophy. It doesn't mean that he wears rose tinted spectacles nor offers facile ideas. His activism is probably more engaged and affective than most of ours (mine for sure) and I can't forget his hike to Palestine when the situation was appalling yet only a fraction as bad as it is now. Who of us can say so much? On ‘Midnight Bloom' there is "Brother" which deals specifically with the Ukrainian situation but how can he write individual songs about every single problem which much distress him? Better to go for more broad value centred songs which are applicable to many situations & inspire people to have the courage to do the right thing. It cannot be easy for him living in a country where his ways of thinking & acting are derided by the highest authorities on a daily basis and espousing these virtues as publicly as he does must be becoming acts of bravery as well as defiance and hope. There are easy ways to be a musician when you have Luke's talents but he's chosen to stick to his principles & produce an album of outward beauty but inner steel. I'll leave you with his own mission statement: "Music can be a spiritual practice and path, it can be used to serve and nourish the hunger in people's hearts. I commit to that path!"
Luke is back in the UK to promote the album with gigs in Birmingham (October 9th) Bury (10th) Newport IOW (16th), Brighton (17th) and St Mellion in Cornwall (24th). He'll be playing a couple of Nizlopi dates with John in London as well though I'm afraid those have unsurprisingly sold out already.
