What does it sound like?:
Who creates a masterpiece with their ninth album? Well, in my opinion, Anthony Toner has done just that. A man with a love of poetry and literary fiction, for many years Anthony combined performing – in wine-bar duos, blues bands and solo (with original songs) – with being a local newspaperman on the north coast of Northern Ireland and, later, with managing a small arts centre in the same area. A few years ago, he moved to Belfast and committed to pursuing his vocation in music. He regularly plays the arts centre scene in NI and periodically tours Britain in support of Barbara Dickson, one of his many professional admirers.
Interest declared: I’ve known Anthony casually from that newsprint era in the 90s onwards and we have mutual pals in the NI music world. He’s affable, he’s a total professional and he’s a great ‘storyteller’ in song. I’ve long admired his skills – a terrific onstage entertainer and deft musician (skills that aren’t often married that well) along with a songwriting craft that he makes seem effortless. That being said, while occasional songs will have grabbed me over the years, the core of Anthony’s output hasn’t quite been my thing – classy, admirable, easy on the ear, clearly well-crafted stuff, yes, but sometimes a bit too ‘sweet’ for me to really love, in terms of its production and influences (generally, 1970s American – James Taylor, Louden Wainwright, Steely Dan, etc. – where my interests tend to gravitate to less ‘perfect’, less sunny Brits like Jansch & co.). That’s not a criticism of Anthony, of course – it’s just a bit of background.
Anthony’s lockdown album, ‘Emperor’ though, really caught my interest. His plan had been to address that production gloss tendency of previous albums by taking some of his most popular material and personal faves and recording them pretty much guitar/vocal – to use as a calling card with folk clubs and bookers in Britain and Europe, representing closely the sort of thing he does onstage (minus the gently witty banter). Happily, he was persuaded to make it available as a general release – his eighth album and a kind of re-recorded ‘best of’. It was, I would have thought, the best place for any newcomer to start with his catalogue. Until this one…
‘The Book of Absolution’ is a double album – 27 songs. Anthony felt that this was a body of work that needed to belong together whatever the market might stand or might expect. Indeed, the market for recorded work by troubadours has never been more fragile. Who knows how long it will remain realistically possible for cottage industry artists to continue recording and releasing music? I might have wondered if it was really wise – did he really have the material that demanded this presentation? By golly, he really did!
This is a masterpiece. It is, I think, the sort of body of work that needs years to have been lived and lots of water to have passed under the bridge – along with great skill as a musician, a writer, an observer and a righteous confidence in having something to say. One never finds direct angst or politics or finger-pointing in Anthony’s songs, and his glass has always seemed half-full rather than half-empty. He is an observer, a wry reflector and a writer of short stories in song. All that is here, but so too is, I think, a way of bringing in a flavour of real-life vicissitudes and experiences – several of them from his own family history that marry pinpointed specifics with a universal resonance. There is tremendous variety here, too, in terms of the sound – a string quartet is used on two or three things, a full band on many tracks, a guitar/vocal basis elsewhere, a stripped back piano/vocal if required, incredibly beautiful harmony vocals (very sparsely applied) and so on.
Song/arrangement-wise, two or three things will bring to mind mid-80s Van Morrison, a couple of others have the pithy edge of Richard Thompson’s ‘Al Bowly’s in Heaven’ (something I haven’t heard in Anthony’s canon before), others make me think of Guy Clark’s ‘Randall Knife’ with his mix of the mundane and the mystical in litany form. ‘Paperbacks and Ashtrays’ has the mix of working-man’s pride, defiance and nostalgia found in Steve Earle’s ‘Texas Eagle’ or ‘Bruce Cockburn’s ‘Gavin’s Woodpile’. Without anything so crass as a fuzz box or lyrical techniques that wouldn’t be true to his wheelhouse, Anthony has brought real grit to his writing. ‘I’ve never been one to hold a grudge / But I’ll make an exception just for you…’ he sings, on ‘Going Home Blues’ – for Anthony, that’s visceral stuff (and knowing the matter to which he refers, it’s no idle bit of wordery). I should also say that his singing voice is authentic – he’s not one of those people who try and sound like Americans.
Artistically, I feel that it’s as if everything before has been leading to this album. I somehow missed his early 2021 single ‘Let Me Know’ at the time – a beautifully simple, honest response to the loneliness of lockdown. It’s here, sharing its truth with profound insights all over the shop. ‘Billy and the Vast Majority’ glimpses a fire and brimstone street preacher but it also glimpses those who ignore him, passing by – and they/we are, like them, all stuck in a terrifying place: ‘Everybody seems more jaded than they ever did before / They tell themselves they’re not alone / Staring down into their phone / There is no wilderness to cry in anymore / There is no wilderness to cry in anymore…’
That’s a rare moment of direct opinion from Anthony. More often, he tells the story, makes the gentlest yet most memorable of observations or, sometimes, like ‘Padlocks’, leaves it all hanging. What have we just heard? Was there significance in that last word? No song outstays its welcome – a couple let us hear just how good Anthony is at lead guitar, but he’s always been a songs man. On this album, though, he’s being quietly revolutionary on that front. Having tried the Nashville scene a few years back, he wisely decided it wasn’t for him and got on with his own thing, albeit with song structures that happened to be – given his US singer-songwriter influences – nothing that would frighten the Nashville horses.
On ‘The Book of Absolution’, though, he delivers inverse equivalents to ‘Hey Jude’ whenever he feels like it. The structures and brevity of ‘The Protection of the King’ and ‘Padlocks’ would make the heads of Nashville formula bores explode. If Anthony’s muse has created a song that demands fewer words than you might expect, no middle eight, not even a verse/chorus structure, then this time around, so be it. It’s quietly astounding. And it helps, I think, to make everything flow from one song to the next, from one short story or poetic miniature to the next – that and the variety of sounds and the breadth of Anthony’s songwriting capability. Not for him the Alvin Lee syndrome of everything sounding more or less the same and everything being more or less about the business of rocking. Okay, that was an extreme example… but you get the idea!
In general, while Clive Culbertson’s smooth production style might not usually be for me, hats off to the fellow here for making it all sound like it belongs so clearly together and for the subtle variety of arrangement and mixing ideas that keep the listener listening and that do such great service to Anthony’s songs – songs that are among the very best of his career.
I’ve only heard this album four times but I felt moved to write this review – well, more a heads-up, really – now because I know that the more I listen, the more layers I’ll find, the more things I’ll feel need said about it, and thus the more daunting it might become to do so. So this is just an early impression of an album that I know I’ll be listening to repeatedly, finding new angles every time. It’s easy on the ear and yet stimulating to the mind. The artistry is breath-taking. Like any work of such length, if I were to start chipping away at every piece of its jigsaw then yes, two or three songs might be seen as lesser lights away from the whole – but the whole thing works so well as a journey from start to finish. I commend it to you.
What does it all *mean*?
It means that even if the door closes this year on the ability of songwriter/troubadours to economically justify recording any more albums, Anthony has gone out on a high.
Goes well with…
Long drives… whisky on the sofa… open fires… thinking about things… fending off the woes of the world…
Release Date:
now
Might suit people who like…
Any of the artists I’ve mentioned above.
Colin H says
I’ll post a couple of the songs to give a flavour of the album – along with the Bandcamp URL to hear the whole thing in order.
Here’s the lockdown single from 2021:
Baron Harkonnen says
That’s top drawer stuff Colin, I’ll definitely be investigating more of Mr Toner’s tunes and almost certainly investing.
Colin H says
Good man! It’s an unusually simple song from Anthony – no story construction, just an honest thought at a desolate time, yet perfect.
Baron Harkonnen says
Ordered!
Colin H says
Blimey – that was quick!
Baron Harkonnen says
I usually have a feel for music I think I’ll like. I’m confident that I’m right again and of course I have your in depth review Colin.
Colin H says
Thank you Baron – I hope you find it as compelling as I do.
Thinking about it, it put Mr Toner in the same category as Cream, Focus and Pentangle – as in, if someone were to ask me to name an act whose best record is a double album (in my opinion). Wheels of Fire, Focus III, Sweet Child and The Book of Absolution. No other examples are coming to mind.
Colin H says
‘Paperbacks and Ashtrays’:
Colin H says
And finally, the whole thing on Bandcamp. Support your local songwriter! 🙂
https://anthonytoner.bandcamp.com/album/the-book-of-absolution-2022
retropath2 says
I was sufficiently intrigued by the two songs, finding this second the more gripping, I moseyed over to BC for a deeper delve. Intrigued to see that not only is it a double, as you had said, but that the vast majority of songs are of the two or three minute mark. So an astonishing 27 songs. And all for a penny under 13 quids.
Wish I had known earlier, I could have given him a plug on At The Barrier, where it seems I have found a knack of being the only reviewer in the UK mainland to pick up on selected Irish releases, North or the Republic. (Well, once, anyway, with Sean Millar from Dublin.)
Colin H says
Only 400 copies of the beautifully presented double CD set, I believe. If you like it enough, I,m sure you’ll take it with you to that barrier in due course!
retropath2 says
Indeed so: cooking up a those I missed column as I wonder, prompted, as ever, by the AW poll.
retropath2 says
Paypal have sent me a receipt so I musta bought it!
robert says
Thanks, @Colin-H. What a wonderful recommendation. CD duly ordered.
While their music isn’t that similar, from the looks of your review and sound of the samples he seems to share that sense of irresistible purpose and pure craft in his songwriting that Bap Kennedy had. Is Anthony at all related to the Toner brothers from Energy Orchard?
Colin H says
A wise choice Robbo! I don’t know re: the Energy Orchard connection – I would doubt it, but then again Anthony has dozens of cousins – I’ll enquire.
On a tangent, Energy O mainman Joby Fox is following a rich Celtic soul direction these days. Expect a new album in February. 🙂
robert says
Excellent news! Thanks for that update.
Baron Harkonnen says
The double album arrived this morning and it’s 💥bloody good!💥
retropath2 says
It is.
This fella liked it !
Also something by a curiously familiar name. Anything to do with @feedback_file , I wonder?
https://atthebarrier.com/2023/01/06/2022-brief-return-ian-mcnabb-the-feedback-file-anthony-toner-album-reviews/
Freddy Steady says
Great reviews though not sure Mr McNabb will like being based in Manchester…
retropath2 says
Liverpool? All up north to me. Next you’ll be saying the Hollies came from Manchester and Beatles from Liverpool.
Tiggerlion says
Beautiful review, Colin. I think I’ll give it a listen.
Colin H says
Thank you, Tiggs.
fitterstoke says
Another sale, Colin. I’ve only listened to it once so far – but very impressed.
So there are eight previous albums to investigate? Any recommendations regarding where to start?
Colin H says
I’d go for ‘Emperor’, Fitz – the immediate predecessor, which is a sort of stripped down re-recorded ‘best of’ – more or less Anthony solo guitar/vocal with his personal selection from the previous albums. Here’s a live clip he filmed to represent the album:
fitterstoke says
Cheers, Colin…
Mike_H says
Great song, flawlessly sung and played.