Graeme Jefferies - Canary in a Coalmine '2023

Tracks list

The COVID-19 Pandemic and subsequent lockdown changed the way we saw the world
and how we coped with it. One of the interesting side effects was the number of
songwriters who buried themselves in self-imposed isolation and worked on music
as a form of therapy and cathartic reaction to the loss of freedom during the
compulsory stay-at-home situation.

This is certainly true of the new Graeme Jefferies solo album ~Canary in a
Coalmine~. Unlike most of his previous releases (written and compiled over long
periods of time), the songs on this album were mostly written around the same
time and in the same place–all it took for that to happen was a global
health crisis!

While ~Canary in a Coal Mine~ marks just Jefferies’ second official solo
album, the tone and tenor resonate more with his soundtrack for the Leander
Haußmann movie, ~Sonnen Allee~, than ~Messages For The Cakekitchen~. The 1999
German film was a top 5 movie and featured Nina Hagan and members of
Einstürzende Neubauten. Canary opens with “I Wish We Could Turn Back
the Clock Like It’s 1978,” a piano/vocal-only song written at the
height of the first New Zealand lockdown. As such, the track pretty much sets
the mood for the other nine songs on the album. It’s not all bleak and
woe is me though. The next song, “I Want To Know What the West Wind
Knows,” was inspired by a discarded out-of-print biography of Emily Bronte
purchased for a couple of dollars at the Wellington City Library. The book
touches on her private self-belief that the joy of her soul would return to the
elements at the point of earthly departure. Inspired by Bronte, Jefferies offers
some hope in the midst of the pandemic.

Other tracks like “Where Did We All Go Wrong?” and “Where Do
We Run To Now?” wrestle with the challenges presented by the isolation and
uncertainty we all felt during this time. Jefferies examines the limited choices
we had during the pandemic using a smidgen of black humor, along with a pinch of
finger pointing to create an engaging listen while still managing to bring some
needed levity (“The Love of a Ginger Cat”) to this unprecedented
time.

For this solo release, Jefferies played all of the instruments on the record,
and he recorded and mastered it himself. During the lockdown, he meticulously
restored a Marxophone–an older, long out-of-production American
instrument, the sound of which resembles the timbre of a hammered
dulcimer–to enhance the title track. His refurbished Marxophone,
basically a fretless zither played via a system of metal hammers, is also
featured on a few more songs on the album.

Like the first two This Kind of Punishment records, also made in semi-,
self-inflicted isolation, ~Canary in a Coalmine~ definitely benefits from a
nose-to-the-grindstone, let’s do it now or never mindset that somehow
sets those records and this one apart from their contemporaries.

The cover art is also uniquely Jefferie’s vision. The front collage
features an intact bird skeleton that had been poisoned which he found while
working as a Compliance Officer. The back includes an image of the Wellington
Museum’s display of NZ’s most famous racehorse, Phar Lap, also
mysteriously poisoned (in Mexico during the Great Depression). Unlike Phar Lap,
Jefferies has performed in New Zealand and continues to do so. If we’re
fortunate, we hope to see him play live on this side of the world soon. In the
meantime, enjoy the majestic balladry Jefferies offers on ~Canary in a
Coalmine~, the sixth release from Ally Records.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Graeme Jefferies - I Wish We Could Turn Back The Clock Like It’s
1978 (4:22)
1.02 - Graeme Jefferies - I Want To Know What the West Wind Knows (4:53)
1.03 - Graeme Jefferies - Where Did We All Go Wrong (5:22)
1.04 - Graeme Jefferies - Canary In A Coalmine (4:21)
1.05 - Graeme Jefferies - The Love Of A Ginger Cat (2:51)
1.06 - Graeme Jefferies - Brand New Start (5:28)
1.07 - Graeme Jefferies - Cracks In Our Clay (3:22)
1.08 - Graeme Jefferies - Where Can We Run To Now? (4:15)
1.09 - Graeme Jefferies - The Things We Do For Love (6:12)
1.10 - Graeme Jefferies - Freedom Day Elephant Chant (3:00)

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