Hard Sun

A light has gone out. Vanquished, and never to return. Aside from the near and dear, who would notice? Gavin Clark was a singer/songwriter best known for work alongside Sunhouse, Clayhill, and a latter-day U.N.K.L.E. vocalist. It's a name that barely registers in the zeitgeist, amongst the clamour to be heard, the hipper than thou, the fakes and fraudsters, the hullabaloo of the market place. Gavin Clark was free of such trappings. An authentic. A songsmith cut from a different cloth. A Southerner who found home in the urban North of England, in Staffordshire.

There's something truly arresting about seeing an Original in live performance. My epiphany came seeing Clayhill support a Beth Orton tour at Glasgow's ABC, circa 2006. A voice, at once gruff, battered, weary, lived in like some old stained and frayed jeans. Comforting, and unique. The delivery was affecting. The subject matter personally experienced, full of emotion, resonant, universal yet set to a frequency few would hear. Eddies and tidal currents rising and falling through song. Broody, largely introverted, imagistic at times, an English Original.

I've said Original twice already, but not alluded to the light; the glimpse of moonlight through a parted curtain when hope glimmers and shimmers to a sick, dog-tired, hungover or strung-out cosmic dance. The last laugh is on the songsmith. The Sun is hard, perhaps one of the finest songs Gavin Clark crafted, 'Hard Sun', a paean to fresh starts with nothing but wits to rely on, and on 'Hector's Laugh' surging piano chords buoy a song where "the light is going out on the sun". There's songcraft from the twilight of consciousness. 'Monkey Dead' is probably the best drug addiction survival song, in a lineage that includes Neil Young's 'Needle and the Damage Done'. Death is close in a broody spectre, friends have fallen, mortality is a ticking watch. The human experience is one of fragility. Yet the song lives on. 

Gavin Clark communicated the difficult songs, wrenched from experience like some rare metal that has yet to be recognised and classified. File with the Tim and Jeff Buckley if you will. A Post-Millennial Nick Drake. Gavin Clark wasn't a tragic 27 year old doomed romantic whose life was shortly curtailed. I can't comment whether Gavin Clark suffered for his art, but I do know a pugilist in the face of adversity, and Gavin was a sparring partner, whose song is unfailingly affirmative.

There's songs of glee as in 'Buy Me A Suit' like some Beatles' 'Abbey Road' out-take, or 'Beard' with xylophonic chimes to a cartoon strip-like ditty, and the effusive punch-to-the-air of 'Grasscutter'. The best work may well have been saved until last with the yet-to-surface-release, and tracks 'Years Have Loved Us' and 'Calling In the Cards' from the solo album, 'Beautiful Skeletons'. Light is dark, dark is light, the twain have met. Shane Meadows' documentary, 'The Living Room' goes a long way to capture the difficulty that Gavin Clark faced in performing his own songs with an audience. A fright that belies his articulacy.

I feel saddened by Gavin's loss. A loss that is paltry compared to his Family, Friends and band associates. I'm just a long-term fan, a true appreciator. Perhaps a Kindred Spirit. And I never did say "Thank You" to him for the songs that resonate and speak to me. 

"Thank You for the music, Gavin. You were one of a kind. Rest in Peace, Fella"!