Martyn Joseph

Item: Far From Silent
Author: Steve Stockman

Far From Silent

(1999)

Reviewed by Steve Stockman

Discogs Bandcamp Apple Music TIDAL Spotify

Label Pipe RecordsThe Phantom TollboothJanuary 2000

acoustic folk singer-songwriter

Forever joking about the bleak, depressing aspect of his songs, Martyn Joseph never makes it Cobain-esque slit-your-wrists gloom. Indeed, with the ease of a stand up comedian the Welshman's live act can make you chortle. As he sings on "Good Man," "Broken on the wheels of living, broken by this life, broken yet still held together by his love." He's our British Ragamuffin. Honest but never depressing. Quite the reverse.

Far From Silent is less produced and more in keeping with the live setting of his craft. Of course he does deal with tragedy ("Good Man"), injustice ("All in the Past"), Balkan refugees ("The Good in me is Dead") and the curses of modern culture ("Celebrity"). There is a righteous angst about Joseph's work but there are also those songs that speak of another way to live ("People Crazy like Me") and of spiritual self-discovery and pilgrimage ("All This Time"). Maybe the crux of the whole thing, the difference between one of Britain's best songwriters and the aforementioned Kurt Cobain is in the question of the Joan Osborne cover that he has made his own - What if God was one of us? He is and that's what makes this man's contribution to his industry so vital.

I find both on CD and live that Joseph's work does something that the froth and comfortable ease of modern worship doesn't - it empathizes. Realizing that someone else is going through it, too, helps. Must be why God became one of us in the first place, and yet the Church seems to have forgotten that. Thus Joseph is a prophet to remind us to contemplate as realistically as we can about this planet of tangled and hurting souls. To somehow lighten the heavy burden with the presence of the Godman right slap dash bang in the middle of it.

Far From Silent is a cry to the public. Major label Sony may have given way to Grapevine who in turn have given way to Joseph's very own Pipe Records, but this Welshman has no intention of leaving the helm of six strings and wood. Musically, this is a stripped back sound but one that seems more honest to his place in it all than anything that's gone before. Over 40 songs were sieved through to find eight great originals and two covers. This is his strongest collection to date. Definitive Joseph.