Most probably a name you will not be familiar with, but since arriving back in this country in 2013 after a few years living in Australia, this prolific singer songwriter is starting to make inroads in to the public's consciousness, thanks in part to repeated plays on BBC 3 and 6, and a record deal with independent label Wild Sound Recordings.
Having previously released several albums under his real name, Matt Oldfield (son of Terry, nephew of Mike), fronting the criminally overlooked folk-punkers Drookit Dogs, and remaining an integral part of the exquisite bluegrass country roots outfit Mountain Firework Company, this is his 10th album altogether.
Produced by Brighton-based Tim Bidwell, First Aid For the Drowning is a gem, traversing the highways and byways of folk, country, roots and americana in painting a sound and lyrical picture of death and all its concerns. Named after a line drawn from Balzac's The Wild Ass's Skin, a book about the avoidance and confronting of death, Oldfield claims that a life spent considering death can be a life well lived, as the idea and thought of death has the effect of bringing oneself back to the present and the tasks in hand, as he says in the liner notes. "I'd rather go beyond the gates/Not to stand and stare/I'd rather know what's on my plate," are the opening, lyrics on lead track 'Beyond the Gates', a song about confronting the fear, the gently rolling rhythm and beat supplemented by the dexterous fingerpicking of Oldfield's guitar, and aided by some stirringly deep bass backing vocals, strings and slide guitar.
Highly literate, and often philosophical, from the poetic outpourings of the beautiful, Dylanesque, 'The Belly of the Copper' and 'She's A Diamond in the Foam', to the almost reportage narrative of Elizabeth McCann (about death via a road accident), Oldfield's carefully constructed lyrics are invariably sung with controlled passion, imbibing every word and sentence with meaning and purpose, even if at times you have to think hard as to the actual message and implication.
Musically, there is also no surplus to requirements, Oldfield's remarkably fluid and melodic guitar and banjo playing, conjoined gracefully with Matt White's sparse double bass, and the equally unfussy drumming of fellow Mountain Firework Company colleague, Grant Allardyce, in creating a deceptively serene soundscape that carries with it plenty of understated bite. It's folk and country music, certainly, but not of the old school kinds, rather a marrying of traditions, and with a healthy dose of modern "acoustic" sounds, perhaps somewhere the likes of Bert Jansch and Leonard Cohen meets Bon Iver and The Tallest Man on Earth.
Somehow, Oldfield avoids the pitfalls of maudlin, never more so than on the strangely cheery 'We Are All Going to Die', kinda like a combative yet melancholic late night drinking song as the backing vocal chorus enthuses: "We're holding it up, holding it out, holding the crack against the crowd, we're a long way away from where we're standing." And on the short and sweet final track 'A Mighty Good Time' (which also features local lass Ellie Ford on vocals), Oldfield's both engaging and confrontational stance with death shines through via the wonderfully evocative lyrics: "I must say goodbye/The easy part in that is that I'll never have to lie/Because I've been lying most of my life/Slowly dyeing the day into night/And I have had a might good time".
Jeff Hemmings