I am convinced that the best songs always translate, whatever the format. Watching Otis Gibbs last month play solo acoustic, then listening to The Trust Of Crows with a band, ought to feel like two different experiences. In a way, it does. In another, they are one and the same, because the songs are the thing here. And these songs are so good they would probably work if Gibbs was singing them down a phone line from a truck stop at 2am.
“Holy River Blues” begins with wonderful storytelling, but with Gibbs there is always darkness at the edges. “There’s a stain on this land that never fades,” he sings, and you can feel the whole record gather itself around that thought. Its final line gives the album its title, but really the whole song gives it its mood: weary, watchful, wise, and not especially interested in pretending everything is fine.
“Eastside” follows, and anyone who saw Gibbs tell the story before playing it live will know there is always something going down in his songs. The poetry is vivid, the tune is catchy, and the world he builds is one of those places where trouble is never quite out of sight. That is the trick, really. Gibbs can make the bleak stuff sing.
“Raze” is a lament for replacing history with plastic homogeneity, which feels particularly apt because there is absolutely nothing homogeneous about Otis Gibbs. He is one of those writers who sounds like he has wandered in from another age, seen what we’ve done to the place, and decided the only reasonable response is a song.
There is a gift, too, for loose-limbed rock ’n’ roll. “Ditchweed” proves that, sounding totally different from how it did live, but no less alive for it. “Maybe In Memphis” changes the pace, relaxed and comfortable, like it would rather be nowhere else. That’s another Gibbs strength: he can make a song sound casual without ever making it feel careless.
“Tennessee” strips things back towards acoustic folk music, but even then he is talking to the working girls first, and there is that familiar sense of someone running from something, or towards something, or perhaps both at once. “Mountains” has one of those lines that feels so simple it could have been carved into a bar top: too many people, not enough mountains. Yet you suspect Gibbs could find stories in both. Musically, it kicks up some Stones-y, dirty rock ’n’ roll dust while it does it.
And then there is “Unloved Flower”, which is typical of Gibbs in the best possible way. He is on the side of the underdog, the overlooked, the bruised thing growing through concrete. “There’s a rancid stench of failure hanging in the air” is surely a wonderful opening line, and it tells you plenty about the territory this record occupies. Gibbs is drawn to the forgotten corners because that is where the truth usually hides.
“Empty Spaces” adds a little blues and soul, and it is a beautiful reflection, full of the sort of ache that never raises its voice because it doesn’t need to. Then “Drawn To Darkness” closes the record with another magnificent opening line: “Grey is the colour of my true love’s soul.” My God, the man can write. If the protagonist of the song is drawn to the darkness, then maybe the man who writes it is too. Not for cheap drama, though. More because he knows that’s where the stories are.
The Trust Of Crows is Otis Gibbs at his best: humane, battered, funny in the margins, angry in the right places, and alive to the poetry of people who don’t often get songs written about them. It is folk music, rock ’n’ roll, blues, and something older than all of that. Mostly, though, it is proof that great songs don’t need much dressing up. They just need someone who knows where to look.
Rating: 9/10
