In this crazy self-obsessed world, it feels increasingly as if human connection is a thing of the past – resigned to history. As if admitting familial bonds still matter is naff and not for admission – yet Adam Beattie’s new album released on Being Human Records is a jolting reminder that it still does – matter.
It’s a deeply personal album, and his beautiful voice is like a soother for the soul. In a simply personal odyssey, it’s a story of leaving home, only to return decades later, changed utterly, to find the home fires burning, if only in your memory.
It’s a deeply poignant album inciting own’s own reminiscences and the sense of home, and of loss when it’s no longer there in a physical sense.
It’s that loop of children born, families raised, parents die, children born, families raised, parents die – ad infinitum – while the world just keeps on turning and the memories of home belong only to those upon which they are impressed.
Impressed I am. The album cover is brave in that it’s so deeply personal and tender – a man – we assume to be Adam Beattie – hugs an older man in a sweet and loving embrace. On the back, he hugs a woman – we assume to be the mother – and is this is basically a love letter to the aging parents and the home he left behind – and came back to years later – like a prodigal son, welcomed on return with the home fires burning.
It is steeped in Celtic soul – an album full of fingerpicked Scottish melodies with fiddle accompaniment and delicate folk themes.
Opening with ‘Home Fires Burning’, it’s the foundation for the rest of the album – the first he wrote for it – starting with boyhood in rural Aberdeenshire. It’s a song he wrote when his parents, still alive and well in the same house where he grew up, started showing signs of old age and frailty. It’s the overture for what grew into a concept album with a linear narrative – starting with “I left town aged eighteen” and ends with “Now mum and dad are old and grey.” It’s the story of the life lived in between – seeking a life in music, the trials and tribulations along the way in the big bad world, and just like Odysseus, returning to tell the tales.
It’s an album about childhood, identity and belonging – but also honest about the tougher side of growing up in rural Aberdeenshire. We are introduced to an older cousin in in ‘Brother I Never Had’ which belies a sense of foreboding. ‘To All the Boys’ explores the theme of male mental health, to the birth of a first child in ‘Golden Hour’.
‘Leave the Hall Light On’ is specifically moving, returning home to find the mother has done just that, a small gesture that means so much. ‘The Girl from the Seaside Town’ and ‘Glasgow Kiss’ tell the story of what happened on the journey, love found and lost, before returning to face another heartbreak, the real story of what happened to the cousin in Track Two, with the bagpipe lament in ‘Reprise to All the Boys’ alongside church bells. By the end, we cannot help but be moved, and to reflect on what home and family – and that long lost sense of community – really mean to us.
These are timeless folk ballads steeped in traditional Scottish folk genre, which was a huge part of his upbringing. While his earlier albums draw more on American folk and blues, this one pulls him back to his roots, coming full circle back to the fiddle melodies he grew up playing.
Adam has brought together an acclaimed group of supporting musicians for ‘Home Fires Burning’ – including multiplatinum dream-folk singer-songwriter Fiona Bevan, guest musicians including Anna McLucie, Mikey Kenney and Own Spafford – plus bandmates Dave Hamblett, Zac Gvirtzmann and Filippo Ferazzoli.