Chris Wood: Handmade Life


4 / 5

It's been no overnight success, but Chris Wood has developed into an ­exceptional songwriter, capable of switching between the highly ­personal and the political, and ­venturing into areas that few artists would dare tackle. He rightly won a batch of awards for his album Trespasser, and the "­atheist spiritual" Come Down Jehovah, but this set is even braver, more ­emotional, and wider in its scope. It's the album of a happily married man, living in Kent, observing the everyday events around him, and using them as the starting point for far wider ideas. He begins with songs of love and death, from the ­cheerful My Darling's ­Downsized to the finely observed grief of Two ­Widows. He contemplates war, workers and ­Englishness after ­seeing Spitfires fly overhead, and writes charmingly about asparagus in his ­allotment, before ­suddenly changing ­direction with ­Hollow Point. It begins as a ­gentle English ­narrative ballad, with lines like "it was a gorgeous ­summer's ­morning", then develops into a ­chilling ­treatment of the killing of Jean Charles de ­Menezes. The album is not ­officially released until next year, but it's on sale on his tour or from his website, ­

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