A Larum

Product Description

Lost Highway debut album from British singer songwriter, Johnny Flynn. Flynn's music is brimming over with heart, soul and intelligence. Drawing on diverse influences - The Pixies, Vaughn Williams and anti-folk pioneer Dianne Cluck are all name checked on his Myspace page - Johnny draws on a century's worth of Folk, Blues and Country to create a sound that dwells profoundly in the now.

Acknowledging his debt to these musical traditions but never being overwhelmed by them, Johnny Flynn offers an alternative of substance to those who have grown sick of flimsy singer songwriters and their inane observations. A Larum was recorded deep in the Seattle countryside with producer Ryan Hadlock (The Strokes, Regina Spektor) at his secluded Bear Creek studio. Here they managed to capture the raw energy of Johnny Flynn's shows, underpinning the acoustic guitar, cello and ukulele with muscular drums and bass.
Johnny Flynn Photos

Amazon.com

The title, A Laurum, is Old English for "alarm," and certainly Johnny Flynn's debut is setting off bells. One of the guiding lights of Britain's folk revival, Flynn, 24 at the time of recording, is equal parts busking troubadour and past-century romantic poet. In 13 original songs, where he's backed by his band the Sussex Wit, Flynn muses on death, sex, God, and the wretched state of humanity, often with pointed wit and even sharper intelligence. Melding English/Irish folk songs, American blues, and influences as vast as the Pixies, Richard Thompson, the Pogues, Pentangle, and the literary sensibility of Henry David Thoreau and Shakespeare, he takes listeners on a spirited romp through vivid stories set in cemeteries, trash bins, and churches. The boy, it must be said, has a cheek, asking, on "Shore to Shore," "Jesus, won’t you please us, 'cos you seem a damn nice guy." Lacing his jangly, freewheeling songs with a gypsy's wagon of instruments, Flynn and company often seem like characters out of Chaucer, marking time and making the best of things before the inevitable Grim Reaper. Not to be missed: "The Box," "Hong Kong Cemetry" [sic], and "Leftovers." Simply smashing. -– Alanna Nash

Review

Four Stars! "Flynn can be hailed as the new voice of olde England". -- MOJO, 2008

From the Artist

"I've always been interested in storytelling as an art form," says the 25-year-old singer-songwriter. "Real epic storytelling. You hear that in Chaucer, and it's mirrored in traditional folk and in the blues. It comes from the same desire to set down patterns of human behavior and try to make sense of the whole human experience."
"I like the simplicity and potential honesty of a song that sounds like it's been sandblasted by generations of use," he says of his fondness for folk forms. "Each generation discovers the form and adds to it, or takes away from it, what it sees fit, so it's constantly evolving. With that in mind, it can remain very much of the present and not a fixed, textbook sort of thing."
"A Larum is, well, it's middle English for `alarm,'" explains Flynn. "I chose the title for a couple of reasons. In Shakespeare, you often see `a larum' to indicate some sort of ruckus going on offstage -- and offstage was where real life was taking place. Also, the larum would be the warning bell in every town, and they'd ring it in times of siege and disease, which I think is appropriate for what's going on in the world right now."

About the Artist

Johnny Flynn was born in South Africa in 1983, and picked up his love of the performing arts early on, thanks to a character actor father best known for regular appearances on such classic TV shows as Doctor Who and The Avengers. That affinity for acting proved to be hereditary, as Johnny has also spent much of his teen and adult life in Shakespearian ensembles -- like Propeller, which brought him to New York City last year for an acclaimed run in Twelfth Night and Taming of the Shrew at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Music, however, bulled to the fore of Flynn's consciousness at the dawn of his adolescence, when he happened upon a copy of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan -- introducing him to the man he still credits as one of his biggest influences. Some years later, he'd wander the same downtown streets as a young Robert Zimmerman, falling in with the so-called "anti-folk" movement that had taken root on the Lower East Side., ISBN13: B0013KJAQ6 ISBN10: B0013KJAQ6 Material Type: audioCD