Rather than taking an easy path that usually results in manipulation by those around them, for artists with “something to say” the creative life is rarely a bed of roses.

In his youth, Robert Broughton known by his middle name Edgar was never flower power like Donovan or Bolan (called by his friend John Peel a flower child with a knife up his sleeve) but astride a barricade, metaphorical or actual. His art was always part of real life.

Like other still-true counterculture icons from its origins in the 60s, Edgar Broughton isn’t prolific in the songwriting stakes. Probably only Neil Young deserves that accolade when melded with consistently high quality. Dylan treads water, slipping occasionally, and Cohen probably deserved something more. Though it’s a tad over 40 years since his band’s last album, ‘Superchip,’ this wordsmith has always released well-crafted memorable songs, musically and lyrically with consistent relevance that’s never opinionated, sailing against the tidal trend today with quality not quantity. A maverick artisan, Edgar Broughton always repays being listened to whatever the decade, ever since the band’s debut in the late 60s on the legendary rebel label of Harvest.

As well as several albums that hit the top 50, there were also notable singles of non-album material, an artistic flexibility extended to radio sessions in that period. One classic of the pre-Punk era was the Edgar Broughton Band’s ‘Hotel Room’ in 1971, backed with a credo statement ‘(Judge) Call Me A Liar’. This new CD from Cherry Red Records evokes that single’s timeless atmosphere, a haunting new solo album that isn’t an isolated folkie on stage as one might first presume but a timeless voice strung emotionally over a familiar rumbling bass and other instruments full of gravitas.

Just as well probably, for this is a darker age we live in, a time of lawfare where the west shamefully locks up people not guilty of any crime (Julian Assange, Capitol or King protestors) while plundering banksters with morally bankrupt leaders rule nations manufacturing consent, as ex-Professor Noam Chomsky rightly put it. Not only are people forging chains for themselves, they’re doing all sorts of nasty things pleased as two pence with themselves, imitating what has been done by very foolish bad people: wrote the Czech writer Karol Capek in 1906, who refused the Nobel Prize, but this is equally relevant today lost in the technological age. Edgar Broughton in parallel has kept his anti-conservative ideology bright and burning.

Aside from his lead vocal, guitar (a newly bought Stratocaster with sustainer pickup), flute and programming on an Omnisphere 1 soft synthesizer, ‘Break the Dark’ additionally features original ex-band member Art Grant on bass and slide/ rhythm guitars, Calle Arngrip on cello and guitar (from Sweden, but never met!), backing vocalists his son Luke plus Dave Randell, with mixing by John Leckie who was an engineer at Abbey Road Studio for the band’s debut album when blues, acoustic, psych and prog combined for this original band’s hard rock sound. But like contemporary Jethro Tull, there were memorable quieter songs heightening the texture, a kindred ethos continued here.

Some of these thirteen songs were written during the Covid debacle which curtailed his working for a fair pay project, as discussed in my interview with him in early 2022. Only one (‘Almost Dancing,’ compared by some to late Cohen) is revisited from his self-released album of that period. The album opens with a jangly, bell-like ‘One Breath,’ a love song of yearning with power chords and solo, keys and choral-like vocals in the one track of less than four to over five minutes. A minor 70s theme of sexuality resurfaces on Belle of Trevelyan, lifted by cello accompaniment, though it might be signalling a tragic suicide. All the songs have thought-provoking themes but less overt wording; the beautiful and very moving ‘The Sound Don’t Come’ could be about the loss of his brother and band’s drummer Steve Broughton, (“You thought that you had angels wings / that you could dance and fly and sing / now I see you lying there like a broken drum / they beat you but the sound won’t come”). Its spiky guitar also cuts with emotion. Hymn, perhaps to life somewhat like Jacques Brel, could have had a harmonium among the strings wafting across.

On the pacier side is ‘Six White Horses,’ with a John Cale-like vocal and phasing for an 80s feel, along with ‘Almost Dancing’ that’s ethereal despite drums and multi-layering, as if waving on a windy cliff over a raging sea. ‘Flowers In A Bowl’ refers to generations in a home, the keening heightened by a reverberating electric solo as it again tags one of his ever-present themes noted years ago on the live jam ‘Evening Over Rooftops’: the image of birds from a building to sky, as does the heavy in a non-metal sense of ‘Raven’s Song’ with some 70s swagger in a sole co-write with Grant. A cemetery and its symbolism joins capital-making that needs and uses slaves (“a plague” on what brings us to our “knees”), war that can’t be won, and the storm yet to come.

The closing title track reiterates (in blank verse) his pained regret for what has happened to children on their way to the dark not light. ‘Eulia’ suggests, by that Eastern name and ballad sadness, travels by train in a suitably electric setting. The water-lapped ‘Deben Flow’ presumably refers to that Suffolk river leading to the North Sea, by turns menacing and uplifting while becoming free. In ‘The Half Light’ poetically touches upon ageing, survived by those departed, as another early trope reprises a Native ending on what is a slow-step serenade overall. The only cover is ‘Morning Dew,’ which has a 21st century vibe replacing the riff with almost tribal accompaniment (and flute) in a unique version whose evocative melody is layered for depth. It was much covered in the late 60s and early 70s by such as Uriah Heep, but seems overgenerous to say the song is by Bonnie Dobson and Tim Rose, as he took Ms. Dobson’s song first without credit to its songwriter!

Another link to the band’s last LP, ‘Superchip’ (recently in a superb Cherry Red box set called ‘Speak Down The Wires 1975-1982’), is the hidden last track of machine-enhanced warnings reminiscent of that 80s album’s ‘The Virus’. The artistic booklet has a one-page discussion by the songwriter and lyrics illustrated by Ian Pearsall. Hopefully not a swansong, it is a highwater mark (described as “stunning” by Burning Shed and other magazines) that actually speaks for all this performer’s work down the decades. Unmissable, pure and simple.

Brian R. Banks

Edgar Broughton – ‘Break The Dark’ (Esoteric Antenna 2023)