Grinning in Your Face

Personnel includes: Martin Simpson (guitar).
Personnel: Martin Simpson (vocals, guitar).
Recording information: Ideal Sound Recorders, London, England.
Things haven't been the same in Scunthorpe since the 14-year-old Martin Simpson burst onto the scene with a flurry of fingers, leaving mouths agape and plucked steel ringing in their ears. And listening to this, his second studio album from when he was twice that age, it's easy to understand why: here are performances that are honest to the core, combining a refreshingly direct vocal style with fingerpicking that has been a benchmark of quality ever since.
Most of the material is in the Anglo-American folk idiom, and almost every track is stamped with bravura: from the five-string banjo ("Reuben's Train") to the Dobro, from breathy melodies on the acoustic ("The First Cut Is The Deepest") to some fiendish licks, he lays it on in style. Virtuosity never gets the upper hand of musicality, however: the understated nature of Bob Dylan's "Masters Of War", for example, just goes to show how effective he is with the material of this and any other era. When it comes to telling a story with nothing but a melody, a guitar and his bare hands, there are few finer craftsmen at work today.