In a voice both pure and crooked4 Out Of 5 Stars
Ian Matthews got a surge of creativity after the success of his Jules Shear tribute album Walking a Changing Line. Shortly after, this album of mostly new folkish material was released, and it is, in my estimation, one of his best solo albums. "Pure and Crooked" (which happens to be a line from one of Shears' songs on the prior album) is a richer sounding set that WaCL, in as much as the instrumentation no longer favors the keyboards that dominated. "Dominoes" kicks the CD off with a poppy number, something also missing beforehand.
He also sounds deeply entwined to the material, be it the nostalgic mourning of "Busby's Babes," the snarling lyric of "New Shirt" or even a terrific cover of Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street." I even thought he outdid Gabriel's original. Given that Matthews was usually heavy on outside songwriting in the past, it makes the eight self-penned numbers here all the more exciting. This is great stuff, lost when the Gold Castle label went out of business. While Amazon only offers downloads at this page, used CD copies are going cheap. I can recommend putting "Pure and Crooked" in your library.
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