Michael Chapman: True North

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

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

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