(Cooking Vinyl, out now)
You can be forgiven for not having heard of Raphael Doyle, especially if you’re under the age of 60. He was in the circle of blues lynchpin Alexis Korner at the turn of the 70s, and his band Cafe Society were signed and produced by Ray Davies. But while his bandmate Tom Robinson established himself as a name in his own right, and is now a 6Music DJ, Doyle’s musical career never really flew. After a “a messy life” (his words) it’s high time for him to set that straight.
There’s another more pressing concern. Last year, Doyle was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. This was the impetus for his musician son Louis to egg him back into the studio, accompanied by friends old and new, including Robinson, and folk star Lisa Knapp, to record the definitive Raphael Doyle album.
Irish melancholy and regret pervade throughout. Spoken word opener I Came From Ireland calls to mind those other autumn-of-life reflections – Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around and Gil Scott-Heron’s On Coming From A Broken Home. A lot of pain has been poured into this, confessions about family and finance and career. “They say life is not a rehearsal – carpe diem / I never got past the script review”. It’s sad, and beautiful, and worth eight minutes of anyone’s listening time.
Covers have been chosen to complement this heavily reflective mood. The Band’s The Shape I’m In, played here with muted guitar, and emphasis on the vocals, approaches human frailty with a cheeky glint in its eye. “Out of nine lives, I’ve spent seven / Now how in the world do you get to heaven?”
Better still is Bob Dylan’s Dream, the ancient folk tearjerker that was reworked by the man himself as an ode to lost friendship. How Bob wrote with the wisdom of a 70 year old at the age of 21 is another topic entirely, but it’s now a gift to a man like Doyle, who handles it with due care and attention. “We thought we could sit forever in fun / But our chances really was a million to one…”
Friendship’s a theme Doyle also deploys on We’ll All Get Together Again. One half expects Meet on the Ledge to make an appearance.
It’s not all a downer though. Mid-tempo The Touch of Our Hands with its “doo-bee-doo-bee-doo” backing vocals could be a lost early Nick Lowe single, while the gently rocking Feet on the Floor is Elvis Costello in pop mode. Rose has something of Costello’s bluesier side, the cracks in Doyle’s voice working well with delicate, understated slide guitar, mandolin and piano.
The album is weaker when it departs from traditional instrumentation. The synthetic drums of Kiltermon feel too deliberate a stab at being contemporary, rather than playing to Doyle’s strengths. Ironically, it’s probably exactly the kind of song Radio 2 could slip on in between the Ed Sheeran and no-one would raise an eyebrow, which might have been the ambition.
Doyle recently appeared on Lauren Laverne’s radio show, and the response to his appearance was such that Laverne dedicated her People’s Playlist feature to the theme of “grace”, in admiration of how he has come to terms with his life and condition. Never Closer is a musical testament to that strength of character, and it’s a joy for listeners as well as those close to him that he got to make it.