This month Xan Tyler follows up her 2021 sunshine-swathed reggae-tinged album with The Mad Professor, Clarion Call, with her latest album Holding Up Half the Sky. The new album is an altogether different prospect than its predecessor, leaving behind the reggae influence and adding an intriguing gamut of alluring instrumentation, I’m no expert but is that flutes, oboes and tubas I hear being used among others to dreamily dramatic effect? The album retains the feel of basking in the sunshine, but this time musically reflecting those relaxed dog day afternoons languishing in the balmy heat with a dreamy listlessness, an album that with any luck will herald in the start of the summer after a long dreary wet winter.
The twelve musical masterpieces on the album have a dramatic cinematic feel to them, managing somehow to be both understated and beguiling but carrying a bewitching power. This is largely due to the stories Xan is telling in these exquisite vignettes, each snapshot a celebration of female empowerment, tales which can give you a heartening feeling of positivity and joy, but at other points break your heart and fill you with emotion. Each one of the songs on this album is deserving of the listeners undivided attention.
It’s hard to pick highlights, what with the album bookended with the gently undulating 2023 single Miniature Oceans, also featuring the vocal talents of Emma Pollock, “we tried so hard to hold it, but it slipped away…”, and the affecting sparse instrumentation of Four Little Words… which, despite its musical fragility, delivers perhaps the most powerful lyric of the album to close… “It’s not your fault”.
In between these two breath-taking songs, you could pick each and every song as a highlight, the storytelling both eloquent and spellbinding, take the beautifully touching tale of Joyce and Joanna and their hidden love, this could potentially bring a tear to a glass eye – “what’s gonna happen when one of them goes”. Then there is The Devil’s Hand, a compelling condemnation of the cruel murder of thousands of women tried as witches, Xan’s deeply felt and hard hitting lyrics matched by the power of the music, you can almost hear the creak of the gallows in the sinister soundtrack.
Elsewhere, musically, Freaks could be a cut from Floating in the Night, the classic 1989 album from David Lynch favourite Julee Cruise a song which would easily nestle comfortably in any episode of the first iconic series of Twin Peaks, Rebecca’s Desk has a Leonard Cohen-esque feel, while Ziggy swaggers with an impeccable laidback swing while channelling the sass of Blondie’s Tide is High/Island of the Lost Souls.
This is an extraordinary piece of work, which deserves an extraordinary release gig, which it is duly receiving this weekend in Glasgow’s Panopticon, much more than a gig, alongside the music will run an exhibition of art inspired by the stories told in the album’s songs. Unsurprisingly, this event is sold out already, it promises to be a very special night indeed.
Order the album, Holding Up Half the Sky, now from Last Night From Glasgow