Review of The Endless Highway –
fRoots, June 2010 No. 324

For over 40 years, master songwriter Allan Taylor has resolutely followed his creative muse wherever it might take him, resulting in music that has accurately been dubbed “cinema for the mind and soul”. When a young man, Allan’s formative, direct inspiration was Kerouac’s iconic book On The Road, the reading of which proved the catalyst for embarking on his own personal and spiritual quest.
The Endless Highway, essentially the brainchild of Belgian director Patrick Ferryn (who has a particular empathy with Allan and his music), is itself a kind of road movie, albeit one of the superior art-house kind perhaps, that chronicles Allan’s own life-journey as a travelling troubadour. This journey took him initially from Brighton Beach to Long Beach (New York) before he realised that the American culture he so craved, though undeniably influential, was not properly his own culture, and that therefore spiritually he belonged elsewhere. Returning to Europe, Allan explored Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris, and it was in the bars of those cities that he was to find his niche, in his role as the “outsider looking in” on the microcosm of life itself that such locations will by their nature inevitably embrace.
Through Allan’s own narration, interspersed with excerpts from a handful of his key songs, we experience the true genius loci that invariably connects Allan with his observed worlds, and through the lyrical sketches of urban beauty that are mirrored in Allan’s literate vignettes, we gain an insight into the essence of his special artistry.
On this DVD Allan’s journey is laced with atmospheric archive footage and brief extracts from live concert performances. The disc’s state-of-the-art sound quality brings you right close in to the music (the guitars sound predictably magnificent too!), while the intimacy of Allan’s experiences is tellingly conveyed; importantly, the songs themselves are ideally chosen for their relevance to Allan’s philosophy. Steadfastly, Allan has never compromised, in life or music, and his ideals are concisely summarised in the lines of For Those We Knew which serve as a poignant final sequence in this affectionately realised hour long documentary, one of the few films of its kind which really does distil and epitomise the essence of the man and his music.

David Kidman

Reviews of Leaving at Dawn:

David Kidman, fRoots, August/September 2009:

The latest album from Allan, his 20th, is heralded as showing a return to the more folk-inflected style of troubadour song that characterised his earlier years. Whatever, Allan remains the consummate craftsman-in-song, and he hasn’t in any way abandoned the key themes and concerns that he’s developed and made very much his own over a long and illustrious career. Leaving at Dawn is absolutely quintessential Allan Taylor, instantly recognisable for its telling combination of a uniquely expressive, warm and inviting vocal delivery and an attractive, precisely captured instrumental backing, centred as ever around Allan’s own intricately moulded and mellifluous guitar playing. But it’s also the product of an artist of total maturity and integrity, delivering work of the highest self-imposed standards and exhibiting (in every single aspect of its presentation) supreme confidence without complacency.

This new batch of songs was written(with just one 1993 exception) between 2001 and 2007, each one a prime example of Allan’s second-nature ability to directly share his emotions in simple yet always profoundly literate language, thereby taking the listener on a journey that feels personal yet contains universal truths aplenty. Allan’s musings are affectionate and eloquent, yet often more complex than they appear, primarily because they’re shot through with the perceptiveness and realism that are the hallmarks of a true observer.

Leaving At Dawn is full of songs that follow the songwriter’s eternal preoccupation, reflection with regret, either musing sensitively on love (Lay Soft On Your Pillow, Back Home To You) or embodying a strong sense of genius-loci (Provence, New York In The Seventies), often memorably bringing together both strands in the same song. Especially beguiling here are two songs in traditional vein (Firefly, already celebrated in Tom McConville’s fabulous recording, and The Last Of The Privateers), The Almost Man (a chokingly pertinent tribute to Allan’s father), and Winter (a beautiful and masterfully poetic expression of tender reassurance), while Red On Green is Allan’s own translation of a poignant song of farewell composed by Massimo Bubola based on a WW1 love-letter written my Massimo’s uncle.

The disc’s exceptional, state-of-the-art recording draws you in right close, with Allan’s very special and intimate delivery cocooned by the immaculately judged and empathic contributions of a handful of other musicians (guitar, dobro, accordion, banjo, bowed psaltery, fretless bass). I feel sure that Leaving At Dawn will come to be judged as one of Allan’s finest ever collections.


Nigel Schofield, The Living Tradition:
 
Everything about this CD declares quality and consideration. Recorded with stunning digital clarity and released on SACD (don’t worry, it plays on your old CD player), it is packaged in a new design of durable jewel case and features a cover shot  which is a little work of art in itself [‘delicate – looks like Vermeer”].
This collection of a dozen new songs is contemplative and elegantly crafted. While many of the songs here are reflective – a meditation brought on by the passing of his father, a translation of a lost soldier’s letter home, New York In The Seventies which does what it says on tin, several songs of discreet departure -, the overall mood is of optimism and possibility: “Let’s get on the road and follow that golden star” is the ultimate response to the arrival of the urn containing his father’s ashes.
What slips by almost unnoticed on first hearing is the narrative power of most of the songs here: they certainly evoke a time; they clearly depict specific situations; but they also subtly tell a story – one reaches the end of a song, having, as it were, enjoyed the view, wondering how you got to where you now are. By the time you’ve figured what’s happening, you’re hit with The Last Of the Privateers – a full-on narrative ballad.
Allan Taylor has always had that felicitous skill of making you want to listen to his latest album – rather than it simply prompting a return to earlier work. Here, it is not just the quality of the writing and singing which draws you back to the CD, but also the spacious, acoustic settings: they are rooted in folk music and are richly textured – among the instruments one hears accordion, banjo, fiddle, cor anglais, bowed psaltery, fiddle, viola, a looping fretless bass and, of course, magnificent rolling acoustic guitars. It is, in short, an acoustic treat.
Speaking of the album’s folk influence, one must quote Allan’s note on the tradition-based Firefly: “Many of the finest songs I know are from the tradition and the British Isles and Ireland are graced with some of the most beautiful and powerful songs in the English language.” Some of the finest songs you’ll hear this year on this CD. To steal a line from The Almost Man, “he’ll smile and say, ‘You did it, Al’ ”.

Reviews of Old Friends - New Roads:

Nigel Schofield, The Living Tradition – December 2007:
 
This startling collection is a genuine “best of” (as opposed to a “best known” or “greatest hits”) performed in versions which consistently surpass the original version: the brilliance of Allan’s song-writing benefits from the maturity of this skills as an interpreter. … there is a real sense of rediscovery in every performance and a depth of emotion which makes for a richly rewarding listening experience.
 
David Kidman, fRoots:
 
Allan’s one of the key songwriters of our time, a true professional as much respected by fellow-musicians as by his loyal audiences. Over some 40 years he’s produced a large number of intense and significantly enduring songs. … this set works fantastically well as a strongly unified offering in its own right which highlights both the mighty consistency of Allan’s writing craft and the unstintingly high quality of his singing and playing.
 
Mike Kamp, Folker (June 2007) – Germany’s foremost acoustic music magazine (translation from German):
 
Through the incredible brilliance and delightful concentration on the essentials the songs reach an intimacy that cannot be experienced on stage or in the audience. … Simply a piece of evidence for the timelessness of Allan Taylor’s songs.
 

Reviews of Hotels and Dreamers:
 
David Kidman, fRoots (April 2004):
 
Allan’s Colour to the Moon album presented a series of compelling vignettes largely concerning themselves with bohemian remembrances, and Hotels and Dreamers is, at least in part, both a true thematic follow-up to that album and a development of that concept. This new offering deserves every bit as much critical acclaim, for each and every song is a typically finely wrought and evocative piece of work. While Allan continues to produce albums of such high standard and unstinting quality and freshness, he need have no worries about maintaining a healthy profile.
 
Jon Sims, Folk 0n Tap
– The folk music magazine of the Southern Counties of England:
 
By the time Allan Taylor was 24, back in 1969, he had produced his first album with the young Fairport Convention as his backing band. Obsessed with the Beat Generation and inspired by Jack Kerouac, he took himself off to New York and Greenwich Village where he immersed himself belatedly in the American folk revival. This album recalls the effect it had upon … touring the world in search of Steinbeckian humanity. This is so much more than just a bunch of songs; this expresses humanity as folk music should.

Mike Harding – BBC Radio 2:
 
I think the new CD [Hotels and Dreamers] is brilliant - every track - superb writing, singing, production - great stuff. We've played one track on the show already and I want to play more. I (and everybody I played it to) think it’s a terrific gutsy album.
 
Clive Pownceby, The Living Tradition, Issue 64, September/October 2005:
 
A sophisticated musician and a writer of intensity and brevity, most of the material here has an emotional reach that leaves you reeling. Always conveying sincerity, the listener’s ear is prepared for Allan’s straightforward sentiment but his character writing is so subtle, the darkness of the subject matter on this album quietly reveals itself and perception adjusts like vision would do to a dim room. … Peopled by the footloose and the feckless but always the human – ordinary persons coping as best they can, is surely the very stuff of folk-song?

Mike Kamp, Folker (January 2004):

They are traveller's songs about his journey, real, fictitious or
metaphorical; again and again the expression 'on the road' crops up. The songs and the voice are like the red wine that keeps getting mentioned; they are of astonishing maturity.  I am sure that Allan Taylor has delivered a masterpiece. The most convincing Taylor yet!
[NOTE: Folker awarded Allan Taylor the prize of “CD of the Year 2004".]