Michael Chapman
True North

Tracklist:

A1. “It’s Too Late” 4:24
A2. “After All This Time” 4:05
A3. “Vanity & Pride” 3:33
A4. “Eleuthera” 2:49
A5. “Bluesman” 3:34
A6. “Full Bottle Empty Heart” 3:20
B1. “Truck Song” 6:08
B2. “Caddo Lake” 5:55
B3. “Hell To Pay” 4:13
B4. “Youth Is Wasted On The Young” 4:01
B5. “Bon Ton Roolay” 2:42

$9.00 – $31.00

This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page

Or support via:  Bandcamp  (LP/CD/DL/stream) |  Other Options (LP/CD/DL/stream) | Local Record Stores

Album Narrative

The masterful follow-up to his universally celebrated 2017 album 50, Michael Chapman’s True North finds the elder statesman of British songwriting and guitar plumbing an even deeper deep and honing an ever keener edge to his iconic writing. This authoritative set of predominantly new, and utterly devastating, songs hews to a more intimate sonic signature—more atmospheric, textural, and minimalist than 50, stately and melancholy in equal measure. Recorded in rural West Wales, True North unflinchingly surveys home and horizon, traveling from the Bahamas to Texas to the Leeds of Chapman’s childhood, haunted by the mirages of memory and intimations of mortality. Joining him on this introspective journey is a cast of old friends and new disciples: once again Steve Gunn produces and plays guitar, and fellow UK songwriting hero Bridget St John sings, collaborating with cellist Sarah Smout and legendary pedal steel player BJ Cole, who has accompanied everyone from John Cale to Scott Walker, Elton John to Terry Allen, Felt to Björk to Brian Eno. 

[youtube https://youtu.be/Ag8uCJGlpig]

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent. 
– Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sonnets of Desolation (1885–6)

In one of his so-called Sonnets of Desolation, written in the mid-1880s, the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins describes a sleepless night as “the fell of dark,” the “black hours.” A few lines later he clarifies, with what reads today as a certain grim punchline humor, a Victorian “BTW”: “But where I say / Hours I mean years, mean life.” We all know what he means.

Michael Chapman’s elegiac new record True North, the latest chapter in the long story of one of our greatest living guitar stylists and songwriters, navigates the same treacherous and tenebrous territory of time. The album begins with the gnawing regret of “It’s Too Late,” and every song Chapman sings thereafter directly references the passing of time—its blind ruthlessness, its sweet hazy delights—in noirish language almost mystical in its terseness and precision. (The two transportive, gorgeous instrumentals, one per side, both have appropriately evocative—though decidedly not Northern—pastoral place names for titles: Eleuthera is an island in the Bahamas where Chapman habitually holidays every winter, and Caddo Lake straddles the border between Texas and Louisiana.) This is Chapman at his darkest and most nocturnal, yes, but also his most elegant and subtle, squinting into the black hours with an unseen smile.

“Sometimes no disguise is the best disguise of all,” he sings on the unaccompanied ballad “Vanity & Pride,” offering a lyrical key to unlock the album. By the time True North is out in the world, Chapman will be seventy-eight years old and will have released nearly as many records, a staggering achievement. True North represents the most nakedly personal album of his career, his most authoritative, unguarded, and emotionally devastating statement. His universally celebrated full-band 2017 album 50 flirted with much-deserved triumphalism, offering a retrospective of his illustrious career, revisited in the company of the fellow UK songwriting hero Bridget St John and a rowdy gang of younger acolytes including Steve Gunn, James Elkington, and Nathan Bowles. (Intergenerational collaboration has been central to Chapman’s periodic reinventions and perennial relevance since the 1960s—he is the only musician ever to have played with Mike Cooper, Mick Ronson, Elton John, Don Nix, Thurston Moore, and Jack Rose.) The distinguished quartet of old friends and new disciples that supports him on True North features old friends and new disciples alike, but the sonic strategy this time is intentionally subtractive rather than additive. Once again Steve Gunn produces and plays guitar, and Bridget St John sings, collaborating with cellist Sarah Smout and legendary pedal steel player BJ Cole, who has accompanied everyone from John Cale to Scott Walker, Elton John to Terry Allen, Felt to Björk to Brian Eno. Cole is the album’s secret weapon, contributing sublime, skyscrapingly sculptural steel leads, weaving in sympathetic warp and weft with Chapman’s and Gunn’s guitars and Smout’s hovering cello.

Throughout the band hews to an intimate, hushed sonic signature that is more atmospheric, textural, and minimalist than 50, stately and melancholy in equal measure. Without a regular rhythm section—Gunn and Chapman provide occasional, austere drums and bass on an ad hoc basis—arrangements drift dreamily, ebbing and flowing, following Chapman’s confiding growl and helical guitar figures wherever they lead. Michael cites the Jimmy Giuffre Trio’s performance, without a rhythm section, in the 1959 film Jazz on a Summer’s Day as “a revelation” and direct influence on True North. The production hearkens back to Chapman’s classic Millstone Grit (1973), as well as recalling Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind (1997); True North shares something of that album’s spectral gloaming, midnight heartache, and sly, self-knowing winks. Integral to the shift in scale and the production decisions were the remoteness and natural beauty of the recording environment. True North was recorded at Mwnci Studios, a residential studio in rural, woodland West Wales. Jimmy Robertson, who has earned nine Mercury Music nominations for his work with the likes of Depeche Mode, Ride, and Arctic Monkeys, engineered and mixed.

Compositionally, True North finds Chapman plumbing an even deeper deep and honing an ever keener edge to his iconic writing. Compared to 50, these recordings feel narrower in range, less overtly narrative and dynamic and more impressionistic and restrained, but they are correspondingly more piercing and arrow-like in their rending impact, more concerned with an archer’s deadeye aim than pyrotechnics. And Chapman’s aim remains true. Whereas 50 featured two new songs among radical reinterpretations of material from Chapman’s deep catalog, True North includes twice as many new numbers among its quiver of eleven arrows—“It’s Too Late,” “Eleuthera,” the fiery “Bluesman,” and slow-rolling album centerpiece “Truck Song”—confirming the exultant return of Chapman the songwriter. The other songs were selected from various obscure corners of Chapman’s vast catalog (“Youth Is Wasted on the Young” was previously recorded with Thurston Moore and Jim O’Rourke for a compilation, for example.) In these renderings they receive their definitive treatments, utterly transformed. “After All This Time” and “Full Bottle, Empty Heart,” two of the moving duets with St John, are as weightless and lovely as “Hell to Pay” is alternately brooding and menacing.

True North zooms in and focuses the lens more tightly not just musically, but also visually. The title suggests the geography of memory, evoking the Northern England that is Chapman’s home, ancestral and current. Born and raised in Leeds, for many years he has lived in isolated, ravishing Cumbria, near Hadrian’s Wall and the Scottish border. The jacket photographs date to 1963, when Chapman was working as a photography instructor at a college in Bolton, Lancashire, after completing his postgraduate degree. During this period he stopped playing music for three years to concentrate on visual art. It’s fitting that these beautiful, ghostly images of a vanished North grace the album artwork, because, more than any other record in his oeuvre, True North surveys home and horizon.

Following the levitating lament “Youth Is Wasted on the Young,” Chapman leaves us with a moment of levity, the solo number “Bon Ton Roolay.” Appropriately, this sole moment of unbounded joy and ragged hangover humor dissolves. It remains unfinished, unseamed and tossed aside with a chuckle. The work of time is never done. Where Chapman says good times, he means years, means life.

[youtube https://youtu.be/pAIjS8h2BPQ]

  • The follow-up to the critically acclaimed 50 (2017, PoB-029) features Steve Gunn (producer, guitar, drums), Bridget St John (vocals),BJ Cole (pedal steel guitar), and Sarah Smout (cello).
  • Deluxe 140g virgin vinyl LP features heavy-duty matte board jacket, printed inner sleeve with lyrics, and high-res Bandcamp download code.
  • Available in a limited red-wine color vinyl edition, as well as on standard black vinyl.
  • CD edition features six-panel gatefold jacket with LP replica artwork.
  • Artist page/tour dates/back catalog

Acknowledgments

He increasingly seems to be channeling late-period Johnny Cash and has every bit that amount of heft… like the after-echo of every romantic and hopeless hope you ever felt and lost. These aren’t stoical songs; nor are they blandly defiant. They speak a deep truth about aging, and one that spikes several more humdrum cliches: age isn’t just how you feel, but an ineluctable fact; it isn’t just a matter of numbers, but very much a felt experience, and Chapman has delivered a beautiful continuum of musical experience since he emerged in 1969. He’s done nothing less than convert experience into song, not in discrete, album-sized packaged, but simply as part of who he is. 

– The Wire

8/10. More cold comfort from the folk-blues loner… the Hunslet Dylan. Michael Chapman has spent 50 years perfecting his voice-in-the-wilderness croak, the typically wind-blasted True North once more casting a rueful eye over time past and time passing. A glowering inferno.

– Uncut

4 stars. The veteran guitarist and songwriter in top form… playing the role of dissolute troubadour. True North feels both stoic and positive in outlook.

– MOJO

At Chapman’s age, the impetus to look back necessitates a looming finality; in response, he oscillates between bouts of melancholy and tranquility. He gives himself over to memory’s full sway, until the project feels a little like thumbing through a souvenir album, Chapman singing about the postcards that help remind him of places held dear… a fitting platform for subtly psychedelic exploration and deep reflection.

– Pitchfork

4 stars. With his acoustic compatriots Bert Jansch, Davey Graham, and John Renbourn gone, Chapman, 78, is the last of the beatnik troubadours. The Yorkshireman has stayed fresh by developing his style, working with younger musicians, and writing poignant reflections on life passing. Aching pedal steel from BJ Cole adds to the mood, and Chapman’s fluid guitar playing remains a delight throughout.

– The Times

4 stars. The cult 78-year old Nick Drake/John Martyn contemporary’s umpteenth album is typically great—wry observations of a life well-lived, laden with wit and insight.

– The Guardian

4 stars. One of the last original folkies still standing. Chapman shows younger pretenders a clean pair of heels with impeccable guitar picking and tunes that veer from moist-eyed remembrance to defiance at time’s relentless passage … The fact that new is indistinguishable from old, and arguably better, is remarkable.

– Q Magazine

A quintessential journey into one of recorded music’s finest storytellers … pungent, earthy progressive folk music that’s erudite and literary in its nature without sounding overly cultivated or stuffy—his music breathes and flows, winding witticisms and meandering, open-tuned voyages into the primitive-acoustic ether.

– Under the Radar

Truth be told, True North is even stronger than the excellent 50. Here Chapman obviously revels in his continued ability to mine the emotional, psychological, and spiritual terrain he did in his younger years as a songwriter, while adding experiential depth to his approach through a lifetime of profound musical development. In an enormous catalog, True North stands straight-up alongside his finest recordings.

– Allmusic

These days Chapman is less inclined to mine the natural imagery of his earlier work, depicting a world much less sublime and stripped of innocence. In fact, the external world is hardly ever a focus. Chapman, instead, addresses almost exclusively the domain of experience, the vacillations between excitement and despair, recklessness and humility, and knowing and ignorance. Due to the authentic vulnerability of his voice, he rarely collapses into sentimentality or cynicism, winning the empathy of the listener, how we navigate the best we can, given the inevitability of suffering and hubris.

– No Depression

This is a work of clarity and passion… A world of lost love, burnt bridges, and melancholy… a gravelly, rhythmic marvel.

– Record Collector

I would guess that Michael Chapman is roughly twice as old as Steve Gunn, who calls Chapman, one of my heroes. Gunn says he admires Chapman for being, quote, “in his 70s, still pushing along, still doing it.” What Chapman does at age 78, to be exact, is subtle. It’s his own version of folk music mixed with singer-songwriter confessionalism that takes inspiration from both British Romantic poetry of the 19th century and American hard-boiled fiction of the 20th.

– NPR/Fresh Air

Chapman is as commanding as ever, his sharp wit intact and palpable. These are shadowy songs, but they’re driven by his grim humor, which has been shaped by his lifelong surroundings in the north of England… It’s a stripped down set, putting the focus on Chapman’s words and melodies. From the opening number, “It’s Too Late,” with its “wreckage on the highway” to the instrumental “Eleuthera,” these songs, while new to the Chapman catalog, sound fully inhabited, totally lived in.

– Aquarium Drunkard

8.5/10. It’s uncommon for musicians to make their finest album – which Michael Chapman arguably managed with 2017’s 50 – after more than half a century in circulation. It’s much rarer still to follow it with an even stronger record that sounds totally distinct from its predecessor. Sparse, sombre and often sublime, True North does just that. The majestic creations that populate True North not only match but perhaps even surpass cult classics off, say, Rainmaker (1969) and Fully Qualified Survivor (1970). Deeply introspective and personal, these songs practically seep uneasy memories, lingering regrets, restless nights, and the inescapable sense of time slipping through your fingers, never to return. If there’s any justice at all, the future ahead after the release of this deeply moving, often mesmerising, sparse yet still richly nuanced album will see Chapman conclude his much-overdue journey to wider renown from the shadows he’s operated in for far too long.

– The Line of Best Fit

Chapman’s tones are thick and elegant and provide his songs with a ringing, rich emotional heft. The splintered patina of the 78-year-old Chapman’s weathered voice makes already magnetic songs… even more irresistible. The Earth’s magnetic north may be moving at increasing speed, but once you’re honed in on ‘True North’ you won’t want to shift your attention anytime soon.

– Associated Press

Michael’s voice has grizzled with age, but that hasn’t stopped him from writing songs that sound fresh. True North is a bit like the final few albums from the late Leonard Cohen. You can hear the wisdom and the experience in the music, but you can also hear that they’ve still got plenty left to say. And making True North even more exciting are the vocal contributions from another English folk legend, Bridget St John, whose voice sounds absolutely wonderful next to Michael’s.

– Brooklyn Vegan

Chapman’s voice has grown raspier with age, but his songwriting and guitar work remains as gripping as it was on his early ’70s classics.

– Brooklyn Vegan

If 50 was a celebration album, True North could be considered the sound of an artist approaching eighty years old bringing a true representation of his creative status at the moment to light. The result, much like John Prine’s recent Tree of Forgiveness album, is raw and honest and all the more powerful for it… The strength of the songs, the simplicity of the strong acoustic guitar core matched with sympathetic and skillful playing throughout results in an album that is lean, unpretentious, wonderfully played and so very listenable throughout.

– Folk Radio UK

After last year’s fantastic 50, the 78-year-old Yorkshireman wastes no time in reuniting with Steve Gunn for a new record, led by this sage, yet defiant assessment of boozy regret.

– The Guardian

4 stars. A brooding album full of memories, regrets and a keen sense of the passing of time… True North seems to exist in the same ethereal, late-night musical and cultural hinterland as Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind. A mature set of deeply affecting ruminations on mortality and life.

– Morning Star

4 stars. Some people insist they have “no regrets.” It’s an unconvincing and predictable pose, which makes it all the more refreshing that Chapman has fashioned an album confronting regret (and other emotions people don’t like to admit to) head-on and with admirable, Dory Previn-esque honesty. These searing folksongs ask interesting questions and venture deep into pain and loss without ever troubling their close cousin, mawkishness.

– Shindig!

It’s a melancholic lullaby about eroded love, told from the resignation of old age. Fellow British folkie Bridget St. John assists Chapman, her light but throaty tone wonderfully cutting his heavy rusted croon. Over a mesh of twanging guitars played by Chapman as well as Steve Gunn, plus BJ Cole on the pedal steel and atmospheric cello courtesy of Sarah Smout, Chapman and St. John ask if it’s words or silence that ruins love.

– Stereogum

One of the joys of True North is hearing all these players together, in loose conjunction rather than unity. They work out their own thoughts in the shadows of others, making adjustments to one another without seeking any kind of flattening alignment. There are often three guitars going at once — acoustics, electrics, slide — a slash of cello, a wispy thread of background vocals. And yet in songs like “Truck Song,” with all hands on deck, there remains a thoughtful, mournful space at the center. Michael Chapman’s songs are gorgeous, dark-tone places, full of the work of musical collaboration, but also haunted and spare. Lovely stuff.

– Dusted

Even from its subtle start, the latest single from English singer-songwriter Michael Chapman tugs at the heartstrings. “After All This Time” begins with a single guitar line, rich in tone and flowing like cursive until twangy strums take over. Chapman’s rugged baritone croon meets the velvety voice of fellow English folk musician Bridget St. John. Together, the two compose a duet that goes down smooth like whiskey and intoxicates with nostalgia for a love that’s faded away.

– Riff Magazine

It’s a record that sounds populated by ghosts and regret with the 78 year old Chapman ruminating on all of fate’s cruel twists, and roads not taken.  A dark and vital collection of songs that boast a masterfully spare production courtesy of Steve Gunn. Most of the time, it’s just Chapman’s time worn voice accompanied by his beautifully down-tuned acoustic guitar ringing clear as a bell against oblivion.  It’s stripped bare with just the right amount of accompaniment; some of the best of it coming from the pedal steel of BJ Cole whose playing adds a haunting element to the proceedings, cellist Sarah Smout’s ethereal strings, and Bridget St John’s occasional vocal turns which shine especially on “Full Bottle, Empty Heart.” The lyrics on True North are direct, and they cut deep. Chapman sounds like a man who doesn’t have the time for the bullshit anymore, and seems painfully aware of the clock running out. It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.

– The 13th Track

The album stands as an even stronger testament to Chapman’s enduring light [than 50]. Largely just the songwriter and his guitar, the album is hung heavy with the wisdom of age – cut deep with the scars of decades, cascading like rings through wood and lacquered thick with the bar rag whiff of backrooms, green rooms, and broken mirror bathrooms that dot the stages of what passes as fitting for a folk career now and forever.

– Raven Sings the Blues

A melancholy charmer. After five decades, the influence of Yorkshire’s Michael Chapman runs deep through British folk, and via fans Ryley Walker, Bill Callahan, and Thurston Moore, alt-Americana. 

– Long Live Vinyl

As his guitar playing demonstrates, there is also something transcendent in quotidian reality: dreams to pursue, places to relax and reflect, and people to be with.

– PopMatters

Mesmeric. Even in the midst of the dark night of the soul he conjures up, Chapman remains defiant and unapologetic. 

– NPR Music

A fingerpicked portrait of regret.

– Stereogum

A world-class songwriter. Terrifically unpredictable … beyond any genre tag. 

– Pitchfork

He shreds on acoustic guitar the way Kandinsky wails with a paintbrush. 

– Thurston Moore

A titanic guitar picker and personality … heroic and inspiring in his approach to living for his music. 

– William Tyler

All Releases by Michael Chapman