Still known predominantly for heading up '80s indie stalwarts Hurrah!, PAUL HANDYSIDE'S recent two-album spell at the helm of roots-rockers BRONZE proved he was and remains very much a creative force to be reckoned with this side of the Millennium.
His new album, 'Future's Dream' is his first under his own name but the crucially consistent factors are both the strength of songwriting and the passionate performances: personal fires that two turbulent decades in this diseased business have clearly failed to dim.
That Paul has recently worked with fellow Geordie troubadour Martin Stephenson and also contributed a track to the 'Love Goes On' compilation celebrating the songs of the much-missed late Go-Between Grant McLennan give rise to the fact 'Future's Dream' is not going to a buoyant indie-pop album. As you might expect, it's a wholly accomplished and often extremely moving singer/ songwriter album, bleeding with emotion and hard-bitten experience and all the better for it.
Opener 'Beautiful Thing' is -like a good brace of tracks - based around Handyside's impressive piano playing along with (I think) melodeon from drummer David Porthouse and is a soulfully wrought affair. Love, loss, disillusionment and facing an uncertain future are all on the lyrical agenda and are subjects which crop up with the regularity as the album opens out, perhaps nowhere more impressively than on the gospel-style execution of the excellent title track (a little reminiscent of The Blue Nile's 'Happiness' ) where the idealism ("give everyone a voice, they'll never be lonely again in this future's dream") gives way to sadness before your very ears.
Elsewhere, Handyside mines a seam of affecting, redemptive soul-pop on tracks like the yearning 'Whisper In Your Mind' or the hymnal 'Midwinter's Feast' and also gives us tantalising glimpses of a possible future direction on the traditional, fol-flecked 'River Of Song'. He also gives his acoustic minstrel leanings a god run out on the vividly-realised 'Let The Lights Go Down' (featuring gorgeous duet vocals from Maria Yuriko) and the sombre 'Thy Will Be Done'.
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For me, though, 'Future's Dream"s arguably finest achievements are the timely and resonant moments of social commentary beautifully-realised by both 'Everybody Lies' and the closing 'Peace In Our Time'. The bruised, but biting former recalls the kind of snapshots of the greedy, 21st century Britain captured by Ray Davies on his recent 'Working Man's Cafe' album and features some great lyrics like "the Gods are in decline/ even the saints can't seem to find their way" and vividly portrays these lack-of-accountability times. The closing 'Peace In Our Time', meanwhile, is perhaps the best song of all. An incredibly poignant piano ballad with one of Handyside's most charged vocals, its' picture of wars still being waged ("God bless our bombs and the guns we are firing/ caught in the crossfire of lies we told") seems especially poignant bearing in mind I'm writing this on Remembrance Sunday.
'Future's Dream', then, is a fine record which carries itself with gravitas and dignity without ever jettisoning either the tune factor or the need for lyrical sharpness. Released in the slipstream of Sanctuary re-releasing much of Hurrah!'s earlier material, it's as good an opportunity as any to re-acquaint yourself with Paul Handyside: one of the few '80s survivors who continues to truly demand our attention.
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