I'll own up to a certain level of mischief making
in lining this one up in my crosshairs. After all, we've already met Father Francis once before and I'm well aware of what his shtick is - this might be
Volume 4 of 10, but I was neither hoping nor expecting that his earlier works
might cast him as the spiritual successor to Nick Drake. No, what caught my eye
mainly was the back cover and the reveal that this is the Father's 'Christmas
album', and as at the time of writing Christmas is only a few weeks away, it
seemed fitting. The problem is though that it's
only partly a Christmas album; half the songs on it (the whole of side one in
fact) have got nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever, and even some of the
ones on side two that are meant to only have a tenuous link to the
festive season ('Bambino', 'Amazing Grace').*
Apart from all that, I can report that from the
creepy cover kids in, it's very much business as usual. Francis still doesn't
have much of a voice and both his and the band's playing is competent rather
than great, though once again he goes at each song with an honest amateurishness
that never tries to pretend it's anything other than it is. However, the
enthusiasm in that honest amateurishness is not contagious and, as before, much
of this stuff is cloying, sing-song sentimentality (his versions of 'One Day At
A Time', 'You Needed Me' and 'Four Strong Winds' in particular) that clogs up my
ears like fat in an artery. Meanwhile, the 'Christmas side' is cheerless
and po-faced enough to make Cliff Richard fidget and itch to get the Slade
records out. Not for me I'm afraid.
* The other thing that amused me was the order form brochure in the inner sleeve that reveals the Father to have more merchandise for his fans than Taylor Swift, though even Taylor doesn't have a small stuffed version of her you can hang from your guitar neck. I wonder how many Christmas stockings had one of those in them back in the day?
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