Let’s cut to the chase: this album is astonishing. Corin Raymond is a truly masterful songwriter. I’m sorry that I haven’t heard of him sooner. Maybe it’s an unconscious association, but Raymond’s sharp intellect and a delivery that gives the impression he’s worn life through to the barest of threads reminds me of his fellow countrymen NQ Arbuckle. Hobo Jungle Fever Dream is easily my favorite album of the year thus far.
So it is with great pleasure that I get to premier “Under the Belly of the Night,” which is handily my favorite song of the year and possibly of the five years I’ve spent writing this blog. This is the Buddy Holly memorial that Don McClean wishes he had written. For those of us who have ever picked up a guitar and thought to write a song, this is a song that will make you gnash your teeth with jealousy and simply give up, because it is highly unlikely that you will ever write a song that’s almost this good as this one.
It’s no surprise, then, that Raymond spent a year writing it. He says of the song:
“Under the Belly of the Night” began with me imagining driving on some
back road in the middle of the night, twisting the tuning dial, and
stumbling onto a frequency from beyond the grave. Hearing the ghost of
Buddy Holly singing to us from the other side. Over the year it took to
write it, that idea morphed into something else. Sam Cooke and Jackie
Wilson showed up as well. But I never stopped thinking about this
palpable ache in the air, and in the airwaves, and of the voices that
haunt the dashboard-lit cabs of cars and trucks crawling along under the
vast nighttime. “Under the Belly of the Night” – to borrow a phrase
from my cousin Ed Hillier – is about “talking to the ghosts.”
The rest of the tracks on this stunner have the same degree of imagination and thoughtfulness. It is well worth a listen.
Corin Raymond — Official, Facebook, Purchase from Corin Raymond