Short Reviews [The Gardening Club - 2023 - "Hotel Nostalgia / Enigma One"]

The latest release from Martin Springett nicely demonstrates different aspects of his musical stylings, with both the West Coast and East Coast collaborations on display on his latest single. It contains two songs, with the first demonstrating his working relationship with Norm Macpherson, and this song itself is neatly divided into two different aspects, “Hotel Nostalgia” and “Enigma 1”. Somewhat unusually, Martin does not provide any instrumentation on these two parts, just vocals, and while he provided the lyrics to the first, he has again worked with Stephen Bennett, as he did on ‘Mr. October And The Moon Of Madness’, who provided the lyrics for the second. The music was co-written with Norm, who orchestrated both parts before then adding guitars, bass and drum programming to the second. The result is a song which contains sumptuous beauty in the first with an orchestral arrangement which is often pastoral, but with a hidden strength which comes more to the fore in the second part when rockier elements are introduced which have a delightful contrast. There is a depth within this, as well as plenty of space, and I still find it difficult to realise that Martin has for most of his life not been recording his music, as since the reissue of his debut it is like a spring has been untapped and he has been releasing so many wonderful collections. The second song, “Tricksters”, again finds Martin working with producer Kevin Laliberte, who also provides electric guitar, slide guitar and drum programming. This time around Martin provides the lyrics and music, as well as vocals, acoustic and electric guitars and again they have been joined by Drew Birston on fretless bass and Wayne Kozak on soprano saxophone. This shows Martin more fully in the Roy Harper/Camel stylings we know so well, and although the drum machine is a little basic, this song clearly demonstrates Martin’s skills in that the arrangement is deliciously complex while his clear vocals over the top take the song one way while the jazzlike saxophone moves it in another yet it continues to make perfect sense. With this new single now available one can only hope there is a full album to follow soon as yet again this is a superb piece of work from Martin, who of course provided the wonderful artwork which graces its cover.