The first reports of Hugh Featherstone’s latest recording project 9 on the Sub Prime were that he intended to make an independent, low budget, no frills album. “The name is the programme” as the Germans say: nine songs for the post-industrial, post dotcom, post 9.11, post subprime world. So when it arrived, I somehow expected the CD would be a collection of simple ditties arranged and produced in a way which even a Spartan would consider sub-Ikea. Wrong again.

Certainly, as if in tune with the current mood of economic austerity, the CD packaging is strictly monochrome. Be assured, the music is anything but. The stark black-&-white appearance and blocked headlines in the booklet have more than a hint of tabloid; however it seems the designer, once again PhilBy at nemodreaming.com, couldn’t do entirely without touches of subtle elegance in the typography and the use of white space. The general impression is of light and air, accurately reflecting the overall musical atmosphere created throughout this pop album, though not the darkness impenetrable lurking in the corners of a few of the songs.

The CD comes in an anthracite cardboard sleeve with a protective fold-back inlay card, the booklet in a second white sleeve of its own, a duality taken up with consequence throughout the production. As with Hugh’s last CD, Friendly Skies, one has the impression that nothing here occurs by accident.

As ever with Hugh Featherstone CDs, the lyrics are there. I’m convinced printing the texts is a blessing to humankind and prevents many fruitless arguments about what he really said or meant. There are also photos of Hugh and his band, though sadly not of guest guitarist Walter Kraushaar or producer Tom Engels. This time though, instead of his customary brief comment to each song, Hugh has written a catch-all preface titled “About the difference between songwriting and real life”. After reading this I’m not quite sure that there is any. Spooky.

For those who know (or even care about) the difference between a Ludwig Supraphonic Aluminum shell snare and a Sabian HH Thin crash, there is a painstakingly detailed “geeks corner” rundown of all the instruments and gizmos used on the recording, who played which and even a mouth-watering catalogue of microphones – a veritable forest of them. Did you leave anything out, guys? With all that stuff in Tom Engels’ Tor 2 studio I’m surprised there was any room for the musicians.

So, despite having to work to a closely calculated budget and a tight schedule during the bleak mid-winter of 2009 - 2010, the Panel of Experts certainly did not lack access to some top-notch equipment. And as anybody who has followed the Experts over the last few years would expect, they do justice to all that gear. The sheer variety of creative interpretations and deft touches by individual musicians in themselves make for a great deal of listening pleasure. Each song as a whole is solidly constructed, richly decorated, highly charged and moves along at breathtaking speed. And still there is space for some aural surprises that tickle the senses and satisfy the soul.

Each time Hugh releases a disc it is clearly different from previous offerings, reflecting further creative and technical development, the styles and attitudes of participating musicians and particularly the latest stream of consciousness. Songs written since 2005, some of which appeared on his last two CDs, seem to have a spirit of happy abandon. Contrary to many songwriters, it is as if he started his musical career with more earnest material and is getting lyrically looser and more open to experiment with age.

The songs on this album were written over a span of nine years and swing to-and-fro from darkness into light. The harshest juxtaposition occurs right at the end, between the sombre and rather creepy Out of this world (a song of which Hugh writes in the sleeve notes: “I do not personally know anyone I would actually want to sing it to or about, but you may be less lucky”) and the ethereal Hawaiian guitar and cheery Motown drum sound of There’s a light. This mood shift over time, which is heavily hinted at elsewhere (“I’ve got a new obsession - I was dead back then - I’m over my depression - I’m on the road again”), is a theme also echoed by the polarised choices I mentioned previously with regard to the cover art.

Lyrically, the listener is taken in these nine tracks on a series of journeys between very different worlds, from the Western shore to Box-Car City, from Heathrow to Kennedy, from penury to winning the lottery, from Virginia Woolf to Yoko Ono, from the light at the end of the tunnel... and into another tunnel, and even right out of this world. The songs cover a lot of ground, geographically, socially and emotionally and the distance marks the space between us: the lover and the beloved, the rich and the poor, the unutterably smart and the utterly clueless.

The cast of characters ranges from someone who fails in everything and admits I just don’t get it, to an airline pilot as a cog in the machinery of the cut-throat aviation industry kept going by Kerosene and caffeine, to a doyen of the media world who is willing to give up everything and even move to Box-Car City for the sake of love, to somebody whose luck changes miraculously for the better on The day you left.

This latter song has to be the pleasant surprise of the year. Having first seen the title, I thought we may be in for a sad heartbreak number. Instead it’s a hilarious and spirited Celtic style romp. This should be played to all jilted lovers as ultimate music therapy. If this doesn’t cheer you up, nothing will.

All the songs in this collection are witty, and a couple of them are very humorous. We are told there is a clear distinction between these two types of “funny”; perhaps listening to this CD could help us tell the difference: an ideal case study for those who like to “compare and contrast”. This applies not just to the lyrics and Hugh’s delivery but to the myriad musical details embedded throughout: every “bop”, “cha-cha-cha”, “chunk”, “wa-wa” and “zing” has been carefully thought out for effect and enjoyment on several levels.

This is the first recording by Hugh Featherstone & A Panel of Experts since they were joined by drummer David Spencer and bassist John Renerken. Apart from providing the essential rhythmic backbone to the songs, these two young musicians have made considerable creative contributions to the sound of this album.

Percussionist Chris Sichert, Hugh’s long-time musical collaborator (Red Shift, Trans/At, Tone Poets), as ever always manages to find exactly the right “extra” sounds to weave into or drop onto the fabric of the music to increase its lustre above the expected.

Kim Bastian, also a founder member of the Experts, provides further percussion as well as her truly seraphic voice, generally raising the tone by several celestial notches.

Guest lead guitarist Walter Kraushaar, who has played at several Experts gigs recently, adds a razor-sharp, distorted rock edge to six of the tracks, his playing masterful mayhem: always threatening to go completely out of control and eat the neighbourhood, but then coming back in line right on the button.

Hugh himself holds the frontline with a seemingly inexhaustible vocabulary of guitar styles and riffs, intelligent tunes and words delivered with finely balanced dramatic tension. His violin and cittern also make a rare appearance on this collection.

All in all, the Experts have pulled it off with style, producing an album of quality, depth and substance, both musically and lyrically. At least five of the songs stand out in every respect, are immediately listenable and in themselves make the CD a good buy at €12.50. If you really want to get your moneys’ worth though, it will repay you to make a journey of discovery by listening to all of the tracks on this album more than once. I did this myself, replaying songs again and again while writing this review, each listening brought new discoveries and reasons to be cheerful: a joy.

David John    www.my-favourite-planet.com

March 2010