This, the fifth album by extraordinary North East story-tellers, The Young ‘Uns is taking a while to process. They promise “folk songs for our time” but they don’t say “folk songs that will reach into your chest and wrench out your heart”. Yet this, assuredly, is exactly what Tiny Notes does. As such, it gives you some serious thinking to do.
There’s no gentle easing in either. The first track, Jack Merritt’s Boots, is an acapella celebration of the young man that was killed at The Fishmonger’s Hall a few years ago. It’s defiant and deeply moving, a huge stomp of fury coupled with the trademark Young ‘Uns harmony. It has the same anthemic quality as Tom Paine’s Bones and feels equally important.
It’s this feeling that The Young ‘Uns are communicating folk music of importance that threads through this beautiful album. Sean Cooney has, surely, never written songs that feel as immediate, so vital, as these. His commentary on political and social life is as valid, as crucial, as anything that the BBC, Sky News or The Guardian could come up with. The story of Richard Moore is utterly affecting. The normal harmonies are wonderfully augmented by David Eagle’s piano and violin, sympathetically arranged by Jon Boden, and a story of bravery and forgiveness unfolds. Moore was blinded as a child by a soldier’s bullet in Ireland. He went on to befriend the soldier and made the very best of what had been offered to him.
Similarly personal is Tim Burman. This time the focus of the song is a man killed in the Lockerbie bombing. It’s a love song, one that gazes towards the future and one that utterly crushes the heart. Somehow the instrumentation – again there’s piano and violin here – gives a greater pause for thought. The narrative doesn’t have to be driven along by words so there’s more room for contemplation and more space for tears. If this one doesn’t get you, you probably have a howling void where your soul should be.
It’s the stories that stay with you from Tiny Notes and, just like all the best writers, Cooney knows he has to make it personal. So, the epic Three Dads Walking is the perfect track from this perfect album. With Michael Hughes adding the harmonies to Cooney’s strong voice the story of dads mourning the suicides of their daughters is devastating in its simplicity. The fact that the story is about real dads and their daughters gives it a gut punch intensity.
On an album where virtually every single song is memorable, it’s the title track that will stay with you forever. Paige Hunter leaves the Tiny Notes in question on the Wearmouth Bridge in Sunderland. They are there to help the lost and lonely, to help those who are too desperate to carry on. They are notes of hope, notes of love and this astonishing song does those notes justice. Perhaps that’s the best that can be said of these songs – that they do justice to the people in the stories.
Tiny Notes asks you to “stop, feel your heartbeat”. As you’ll have your heart in your hands at the end of this incredible album, you might as well.
Gavin McNamara
TallFolk 