‘Assorted Marvels’by My Glass World is released on 19th January 2024 on Luxury Noise Records. Ahead of the album, ‘Everybody Here They Come’ – which features singer Ruby Barker– is released as a single with a video today, 9 January. My Glass Worldis the invention of composer, singer, musician Jamie Telfordwho has written and recorded alongside a range of talents from Paul Weller to Richard Strange. The new album veers from the sax-driven stomp of ‘White Out’, the first single, to the almost soulful slant of ‘Genghis Khan’, via the claustrophobic plaintive bump of ‘Citizen of Nowhere’.
Jamie says of the new single, “This was an old song with a title reversal nicked from James Joyce, which gives it more gravitas than it might otherwise presume. However, we’ve managed to conjure together a lot of pathos using Ruby’s vocal improvisation and Sean’s Baritone sax. For me, it’s got a lot of emotional power and that’s never as easy to create as you might think. One of my favourite songs on ‘Assorted Marvels’, it features a 60s effect pedal called ‘Fuzzy Beetle’ all over my guitar.” The song is primarily built around the basic piano part from Jamie, which holds the song together with the lead vocal. Ruby and Sean’s parts work off each other beautifully and give the song an aching poignancy.
‘Assorted Marvels’ features, principally, vocals and keyboards from Jamie Telfordalongside sax and woodwind from Sean Read. Sean worked with Jamie on production and mixing. His previous musical credits include Edwyn Collins, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, and recently Dave Gahan and the Soulsavers to name but a few.
Jamie Telfordsaid, “The album title, ‘Assorted Marvels’, comes from the half remembered former name of a Victorian shop in Kennington, London – now run as a gallery by artist friends Rob Kesseler and Agalis Manessi. It seemed to suit the collection of material that we had assembled.”.
‘Assorted Marvels’is the sequel to the 2022 ‘Tree.Shadow.Piano’ album, and is less overshadowed by the spectre of Covid and the dead! Different themes do indeed emerge on this album; philosophical, topical, direct, ephemeral, and humorous. Most of the songs were written and recorded in Scotland – the remainder in Sean’s Famous Times studios in London where they were all finished off and mixed. Jamie found Scotland an easy place to write, whilst London was an easier place to be specific and
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As the name suggests, ‘Assorted Marvels’album draws together songs that sparkle and shimmer variously, drawing the attention in different ways. These are songs that, in Jamie and Sean, share the same parents, though each has its own assorted and tangled history of both influence and meaning. It’s a great listen, and the song writing shines through.
