Compared with ‘Live at Leeds’ or ‘Kick Out The Jams’, ‘Live in the Reception Class of Bourn Church of England Primary School, Bourn, Cambridgeshire’ doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but then it’s at best a semi-official release; a 5-track EP available for a modest £2 from the artist’s website.
Yet regardless of its low-key public status, it’s an essential addition to Cambridge troubadour PAUL GOODWIN’S canon. Having first appeared on W&H’s radar with his introspective, but engaging debut LP ‘Scars’ in 2009, the quality of his work was healthily confirmed by last year’s ‘Trinkets & Offcuts’ collection which, despite its dismissive title, was one of the year’s most under-rated releases.
‘Live In The Reception Classroom...’, though, is something else entirely. While ‘live’ releases are usually an excuse for an artist to wheel out tried and tested favourites, only two of these five tunes are from ‘Scars’ while ‘Trinkets & Offcuts’ doesn’t even bother the scorers.
Instead, Goodwin’s restless muse is already moving forward and rolling with the punches. As opposed to the often relatively sparse, acoustic feel of ‘Scars’, he’s in tandem with a full band (including regular collaborator David Greeves on second guitar) and the fuller sound suits the feel of the new songs, especially the no-nonsense ‘The Forked Tongue & The Blind Eye Turned’, even if Goodwin’s withering lyrics (“this slowly rotting apple of my eye”) are always liable to stab daggers into already-bleeding hearts.
Elsewhere, Goodwin relentlessly picks at the scabs during the slow-to-medium chime of ‘Cold Case’, his words sparking with the rapier wit of Patrik Fitzgerald (“you know you’re in trouble when your lover calls you ‘mate’”) and his voice quivering with hurt and disappointment (“there are no happy endings/ things’ll either end or carry on until they quietly burn out”). The two selections from ‘Scars’ – ’60 Miles With A Slow Puncture’ and ‘Borderline’ – really take off too. The former is a steely, rockabilly-influenced shuffle, while the latter hits monster Bob Mould-style angst overload before it bows out.
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It’s all mighty fine, though the closing ‘Muscle Memory’ particularly stands out. A sparse, aching postscript (“it’s dead love, it’s nothing to be scared of”), it’s a song for when the ashes have been raked over the final time and it’s all the greater for refusing to pull any emotional punches whatsoever. If he’s got more of this calibre lurking in the wings, Goodwin’s next is gonna be some record.
Anyway, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. ‘Live In The Reception Room...’ may be designed primarily for the faithful, but it’s got the hallmarks of a rarity that all long-terms fans are gonna really treasure in future. It’s good to know great Rock’n’Roll can still be generated in the most unlikely of places, isn’t it?
Hear and buy the EP from Paul Goodwin's website
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