Funny how things workout sometimes. No sooner had I finished rambling on about the PSA’s political songs than I got an email from singer Otis Gibbs saying that his new album Joe Hill’s Ashes was available for download.

 

I’d never heard of Otis Gibbs until I saw him support Billy Bragg just over a year ago – where he did a great job – and persuaded me to pick up all his albums in the bar after the show. Grandpa Walked the Picket Line, 49^th and Melancholy, Once I Dreamed of Christmas (not exactly an anti-Christmas album, but perhaps a realistic Christmas album – one where Santa stabs Lloyd the Reindeer in a bar fight and features the classic Crap for Christmas) and One Day our Whispers are all good examples of the blue-collar American singer songwriter’s art. There’s bits of folk and bits of rock and bits of blues and a dollop of country. Reading about his life (http://otisgibbs.com/) and listening to his lyrics you can see that Woody Guthrie was a big influence on the young Gibbs – and there’s some of Guthrie in the music, but the most obvious influence is Steve Earle (though, perhaps inevitably, there are threads from the likes Dylan, Springsteen and Willie Nelson on some of the tracks on some of the albums).

 

Gibbs palette tends towards the small town and rural which gives his music a distinct alt-country edge and his left-wing politics are never far from the surface. Perhaps his most memorable song – certainly when you hear it live, when it can set the spine a-tingling – is “The People’s Day” from One Day Our Whispers  – with its  “one day our whispers will be louder than your screams” sing-a-long chorus.

 

From a first listen, the thing that strikes you about this new release is the stronger production. Even listening via the live streaming option, Otis’s voice sounds richer and stronger and more in your face than earlier albums and there’s a lovely folky but restrained accompaniment to many of the songs. It’s a long way from the rough and tumble recording of 49^th and Melancholy.

 

On a first listen, the opening track “Joe Hill’s Ashes” is a keeper and “Twelve Men Dead in Sago”and “Outdated, Frustrated and Blue” share a sweet melancholy sound and a restrained bitterness at the decline of industrial America.

 

Track seven, “The Town That Killed Kennedy” leaps out of the headphones – with Gibbs straying towards Tom Waits territory to pretty good effect. The album really takes off from there, “The Ballad of Johnny Crooked Tree”, the almost spiritual “I Walked Out in the River”, the boppy “Cross Country” all make an impact but its the doleful duo “My New Mind” and “Something More” that wind up the album in somber but powerful one-two that leave the strongest impression – I especially like “Something More”.

 

You can listen to the whole album by Wannamaker, Indiana’s finest for free or download it for $9.99 (about £6 given the current PayPal exchange rate). The CD is released on May 4 in the US and May 24 everywhere else. I recommend it. Frankly you’ve got a love a guy who finishes his biography with the line: “Recently, he has been examining ways of using bird feeding as a form of civil disobedience.”