Mull Historical Society: In My Mind There's A Photograph album review – Memories in melody
Colin MacIntyre aka Mull Historical Society assembles a glittering literary line-up who provide lyrics inspired by important photos in their lives. Fiona Shepherd finds the end result to be a fine album of evocative indie pop
Colin MacIntyre has a lifelong love affair with creation, curation and celebration. Whether authoring children’s books, crime capers or cold case mysteries, his native Mull is both a central inspiration and character in its own right. Likewise, in his long-running musical guise as Mull Historical Society, he has penned many a fond tribute to island life. More recently, though, he has ceded lyric duties to fellow writers, inviting others to contribute vignettes inspired by key rooms and, now, significant photographs in their lives, setting their words to music, like the Elton to their Bernie.
In My Mind There’s A Room and its newly minted follow-up, In My Mind There’s A Photograph, are impressive undertakings, marshalling a guest list of prestigious contributors, from international literary prize winners and some household Scottish names to a former government minister in order to take on wide-ranging topics from home and away. Unsurprisingly, many have chosen family photographs, with nostalgia as a recurring theme. Pulitzer Prize winner Yiyun Li’s lyrics are inspired by a photo of her childhood accordion band. Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch surveys his grandparents’ home on ‘Midnight Sun’ and journalist Dan Richards celebrates his grandfather on ‘Where Are The Heroes?’. Irvine Welsh goes for a recent personal memory, meeting his wife during lockdown, on ‘Dopamine Eyes’. Len Pennie, who recites her own ‘A Wish We’d Taen Mair,’ waxes more generally on the capturing of memories in images. In many cases, MacIntyre reverts to blithe indie pop as a foil for their melancholic sentiments.
Louise Welsh chooses an archive pic of the construction of the M8 motorway, cutting a swathe through Glasgow city centre on ‘Charing Cross Canyon’. Ali Smith’s uncovering of a newspaper photograph of her mother and aunt in a car forms the basis for ‘Hillman Imp’, with some lovely flourishes such as ‘when she put her foot down, she really put her foot down’. The personal becomes political as Colum McCann wrestles with his father-in-law’s survival of 9/11 on ‘Once Upon A Tightrope’ while Palestinian poet and aid worker Jehan Bseiso contributes ‘Gaza On My Back’, for which MacIntyre musters some anger but also lyricism in his ragged vocal and surefooted backing.
Words and music come together happily on ‘Cattle Bells’, where Alexander McCall Smith draws on his African roots with affecting simplicity through a sweet piano ballad with soothing female backing vocals. Writer/politician Alan Johnson contemplates his parents’ post-war nuptials on ‘The Soldier And The Waitress’, but can only see the unhappiness to come. MacIntyre interprets this bittersweet ambivalence with staccato vocals and punchy brass before the chorus breaks like a wave, evoking the spectrum of emotions that comes from leafing through an old photo album.
In My Mind There’s A Photograph is released by Last Night From Glasgow on Friday 29 May.