I first came across Will Varley via a compilation that Lewes based record store and label, Union Music, put out last year in response to the General Election. A collection of ‘protest songs’ where his contribution, ‘The Sound of the Markets Crashing’, was a particularly gloomy rendering of society’s woes and capitalism’s ills. Like many with an acutely negative view of free markets, unfettered capital and predictions (wishful thinking even) of the imminent collapse of neo-liberalism (or just the markets crashing) haven’t come to pass, nor is it likely to with any accuracy. It will be a slower and infinitely more complicated death, as the wheel of evolution turns imperceptibly and beyond our control. We are, after all, just teeny tiny cogs in this gigantic machine.

The world seems to be falling around Will Varley on a global and personal level. Despite tours with Frank Turner and The Proclaimers, a fast rising fanbase and acclaim for his hard-hitting contemporary political-folk songs, he’s not happy. But we wouldn’t really want it any other way, would we? Not only is the unholy triumvirate of greed, hatred and ignorance propelling our futures into the dark unknown, but there's personal loss to deal with too. Despite the acclaim, the slightly more secure finances (we can only guess) and a bright musical future to look forward to, Varley isn’t about to write happy-clappy songs, but there can be no doubt that there is a leap in maturity on display here.

Plenty of Varley’s previous material veered on the deranged, and indeed insulting. ‘They Wonder Why We Binge Drink’, ‘We Don’t Believe You’ and ‘King For A King’ (“By the time you can speak they got you in school, where just asking questions is breaking the rules.”) were rammed full of sweeping statements and wholly negative assumptions about people and society in general. Great and sometimes fun to listen to but nuanced and subtle these songs were not.

But Varley himself seems to have turned a corner. For his fourth album, Kingsdown Sundown, we find a much more sombre, contemplative, and poetic Varley. Like an angry young man, he has grown up. Grown up to understand that life is more complicated than simply a case of ‘us and them’.

Burrowing himself below a pub in Deal, Kent, which happened to have a recording studio, Varley set to work on a stripped back album that for the most part features just voice and guitar. Lead track ‘To Build A Wall’ deals with life’s complex issues and with The Donald on the verge of perhaps becoming the 45th President of the United States of America, Varley’s physical and metaphorical walls sound prescient. At the other end of the spectrum, the mournful ‘February Snow’ is deeply personal, and features ever-so-subtle strings in the mix. Again, it’s a fine example of the new-found sophistication of Varley, both lyrically and musically. Indeed, Kingsdown Sundown features an extended range of guitar playing styles, helping to kerb the boredom at bay, a boredom that can easily result from an album made up solely of acoustic guitar numbers. His playing on the heartfelt ‘When She Wakes Up’ is raw and free flowing, recalling Bert Jansch in his 60’s heyday, while the much simpler strumming of ‘Let Your Guard Down’ and the gently epic, and Dylanesque ‘Too Late Too Soon’ (“Across that great ocean of time the memories come sailing, like the waves on the back of your mind they slowly start breaking,”) are in essence love songs both engagingly poetic and understated passion.

Sometimes, Varley does revert to good old fashioned rabble-rousing, fists-in-the-air stuff, such as on ‘We Want Our Planet Back’, although this is a neat subversion of the ‘we want our country back’ mantra of some deluded Brits. Lines such as “another six million brain dead readers’ can leave a little sour taste in the mouth. If only life was THAT simple. But, on ‘Something Is Breaking’, Varley pulls back a little whilst adding poetic flourishes to what is essentially a scathing, but targeted attack on world affairs, in a style not unlike John Lennon on his ‘Working Class Hero’: “There’s money on the table, and blood on the floor,” he sings in a manner of weary, yet controlled anger.

In parts, Kingsdown Sundown is unremittingly bleak and grim, and also on call to arms (“If we divide and fall this could be the end”, but Varley has, for the most part, successfully dialled back on the over-the-top polemics, and therefore should open up his music to beyond the already converted. The beautiful woodcut illustration of a pair of lovers overlooking an idyllic English scene should help too. A couple of cogs in what can be a beautiful life.
Jeff Hemmings

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