Affecting Albums - Come Home for Autumn by Anthony Atkinson

Come Home for Autumn by Anthony Atkinson

Candle Records   2003

(If you have a Spotify account, clicking on the links in the song titles will take you to that track)

Candle Records flickered out somewhere about 2007, and what a loss to Indie Pop it was. The Melbourne-based label was home to artists such as The Lucksmiths, Darren Hanlon,, The Mabels, The Guild League, The Small Knives, and the list goes on. Each of these acts were lyrically rich, and produced fantastic pop tunes that can rapidly become tunes to live your life by as you can't help humming them again and again.

One of the stalwarts of the label was Anthony Atkinson, both as a solo performer and with The Mabels. Come Home for Autumn was his first solo album, and what a great debut it was.

Ranging from very spare guitar to rock tinged with feedback, each song takes us on a journey into love, work, and life in the inner city in the early 2000s.

Atkinson's delivery is often laconic, and his at times ironic lyrics, merging sometimes into lament, are showcased on "City of Crime", with it's wonderful slightly drunken summer afternoon drum beat and strumming, finishing with guitar picking into the sunset.....

"Sidestep" is a wonderfully simple sung duo on the difficulties of communication between men and women, underlain again by guitar.

The highlight for me from this album though is the rock-out track "Rediscover Me", with its simple pounding rhythm and feedback inspired guitar and lyrical fantastic-ness -

"Don't stay in London
Come home for Autumn
Like the trees,
I promise to be at my best

And I'm a firm believer
That our team's the season's sleeper
And I wanna know
Are you comin home for the parade
I wanna know will you be standing with me?"

........................

"But still I wait
Until you're over overseas
And I wait
For you to re-discover me"

This record is a little gem, and yet again a lesson in the truism that simpler is often better when it comes to pop music.

Worth re-discovering!

Come Home for Autumn is available on iTunes, Spotify, and from Plastic Viking Helmet Records, who also stock many other ex-Candle Records artists.


Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell