Ten Blue Songs

Jason McNiff’s 10th album, Ten Blue Songs, is less about melancholy than celebration: a snapshot of the musical life he’s spent years building. Produced and recorded by Trevor Moss at Bexpop in Bexhill-on-Sea, it puts feel and performance ahead of technical perfection.

Beginning live in the studio, the album layers clarinet, double bass, piano and violin around McNiff’s vocal and guitar takes, giving it the immediacy of a live performance. Nightshift Blues draws on Tale of a Married Couple by Italo Calvino, while Whoever I Am reflects the spare storytelling of Raymond Carver and Ernest Hemingway.

McNiff calls Scared to Love the album’s emotional centre. Born in Bradford in the mid Seventies, he moved to London in 1995, learned on the blues circuit, and made early records with Andy Allan, aka Hank Dog, including Nobody’s Son, named Americana UK’s album of the year.