Irrelevant Fiction by Robert Sharp

Remember the journey, it was bright and early..

A long drive to North Devon from West Yorkshire.  Keeping musical company with Robert Sharp's latest album: Irrelevant Fiction.  Complex, intricate and welcome song writing helps to make the M1, M42 and M5 motorway monotony much less of a chore.  Mum's not well and we are all worried about her continuing dysphagia.

The title track begins with gentle acoustic picking and electric guitar, before launching into perfect driving music - stopping and starting like the gridlock.  Robert's voice, a smooth chanter, with jagged breathed edges, a painting of pictures on silence with unexpected melodic twists and turns.  I try to pull out the words, but can't always follow them, these songs are impressions of events and places, journeys for complex men and women everywhere.

The traffic has cleared and the sun has come out for the A361 to Barnstaple.  'On We Go' is playing for the fifth time, selected for another listen and then another, I am drawn to its Americana influence.  Uplifting in the afternoon light.

[Later: Mum is lying on her bed and my Uncle is standing over her, holding her hand and there is a moment there, a look in his eye, a question about age and ageing, the separation of hundreds of miles and lack of mobility.  This business of getting old is a bastard, he says.]

The return journey is a never ending eight hour monster.  Return journeys always seem more arduous.  I discover the final track on the album 'Avoid the Mirror' - an accordion fuelled piece of beautiful darkness.  A great thumping bass line.  There are tears in my eyes, the realisation of the last few days - lovely moments that go unmentioned and difficult moments too, like waves across the passing decades.  Music is a perfect counselling, 'Avoid the Mirror' brings it all home, dark, dark town where we all fell down ..

All music has a context, it takes place in a time and place where things are happening in our lives.  This album is not irrelevant and I suspect much of it is not fiction, I sense a reality and heart felt reasoning.  It is full of dramatic highs and lows, just like my journey to Ilfracombe and back.

Buy this album, enjoy it, embrace it.

LISTEN AND FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE SONG WRITING OF ROBERT SHARP HERE: