2xLP
$29.00 USD

As the final act before their hiatus - coming after three critically praised albums in a decade - Live at the Trades Club Hebden Bridge is Cherry Ghost performing an intimate, starkly arranged set at the 2015 Heavenly Weekender. Released now for the first time - on double vinyl - this is perhaps the best realised collection of songs from Cherry Ghost, the alias of the Ivor Novello award-winning songwriter Simon Aldred.

The instrumentation - Aldred is joined on keyboards and light percussion by Christian Madden and Grenville Harrop - brings to the fore Aldred's peerless songwriting, his oak-aged, prematurely wisened baritone. All of human life is here - tracking a drizzly Northern gothic of last bus loneliness, late-night Spars, solitary drinkers, factory floors and Gods that betray. And yet, there's more than meets the eye. There's magnetic renderings of his best known songs - 4AM, People Help the People, the soaring Mathematics - but surprises reveal themselves. All I Want and Herd Runners candidly examine Aldred's sexuality, whilst the seldom heard b-side Bad Crowd reveals Aldred to be a much funnier songwriter than remembered.

What runs right through Aldred's work, however, is a yearning - a much tested faith in romance - so no wonder that the album ends on its most optimistic notes, at the darkest point of winter nestled in the West Yorkshire valleys, promising clear skies ever closer.

Tracklisting

  • Drinking For Two
  • Herd Runners
  • 4am
  • Fragile Reign
  • Sacramento
  • Thirst For Romance
  • My God Betrays
  • Throw Me To The Dogs
  • All I Want
  • False Alarm
  • Bad Crowd
  • Please Come Home
  • Mathematics
  • Four Eyes
  • People Help The People
  • Clear Skies Ever Closer