For a quarter of a century, Tim Grimm has been writing songs of stunning – and rare – quality. He has a way of drawing you in like only the very best writers can. And never mind the beauty of the harmonies on “Up In The Attic” and the perfection of the music – the story itself is an incredible thing.
That’s typical of Grimm. The way he uses words is so wonderfully original.
On “Getting Older” he encounters an angry veteran and uses him as a conduit for the ageing process itself – a track of particular resonance given that your humble scribe is a matter of days away from his own half-century.
If the piano makes that one, then Woody Guthrie himself (more of him later) would be proud of “In The USA.” Its lament on gun culture in America hits home all the harder given recent events.
“Hunting Shack” recalls Johnny Cash, and its old-school country shuffle is as classic as it gets.
There are two covers here, yet somehow you couldn’t imagine “Barbed Wire Boys” on any other record but this one. If we weren’t familiar with that one prior to this, then that’s not the case with John McCutcheon’s wonderful anti-war “Christmas In The Trenches.”
A frequent visitor to the British Isles, Grimm captures some of the rugged Irish coastline in “Mists Of Ennistymon.” You can imagine Seth Lakeman bringing it slightly east, but its roots reach deep into the ancestry.
“Bow And Arrow” is sparse – a little like his last album – and he’s updated one of his best-loved songs, “Woody’s Landlord,” adding a couple of verses. A bit like Billy Bragg does with “Waiting For The Great Leap Forward.” It’s magnificent, of course, and let’s just say Tim Grimm is no fan of J.D. Vance or the wider MAGA movement.
Whether acoustic guitars can actually kill fascists is open to question – and lord knows if you’re a socialist right now, the world is bewildering and scary. Yaxley-Lennon leads 150,000 bigoted idiots (you can all sue me) in London on Saturday, and over there they’ve got the orange-faced hate-monger. As Grimm sings on “Broken Soul”: “Don’t it break your heart.” We can’t defeat these people with song, but we can make the world better for five minutes and three glorious seconds.
There’s an innate sadness too in the semi-spoken beauty of “Hadley’s Banjo.” Storytelling in the great tradition, and the Latin-sounding guitar seems to come from the desert.
Sometimes, when you listen to music this much, you come across someone who should be a household name. Tim Grimm is that. Bones Of Trees is yet another record that proves if talent was worth money in 2025, then Grimm would be a billionaire.
Quite simply, the best album of its type this year. Utterly flawless.
Rating: 10/10
