This one has been in the books since we started our Album of the Week series ten weeks ago, primarily because it has been my personal album of the week for so many weeks since its release in 2022. Beautifully capturing the confluence of musicianship and relationship at a time when human interaction was scarce, ‘Among Friends’ is a personal diary shared with the world with space for individuals to transcribe their own memories.
My first encounter with JL Turner was in 2015 – the year I started playing guitar. His passion for the craft of music making, his skill on the guitar, and his ability to present music so organically through a small computer screen (my computer screen was pretty small then) served me in my formative playing years and continues to drive me forward in my career. That’s the pretence with which I approached this album. You might have no prior knowledge of him. That’s more than okay; if anything, I can assure you that this means you are about to uncover a waterfall of musical excellence. ‘Among Friends: A Musical Travelogue’ was recorded in August 2021, as the world threw off the cover of covid-19 restrictions to welcome back travel, face-to-face contact, and subsequently in-person musicking (to nab a Christopher Small term). To celebrate these freedoms, JL Turner and his wife Kelly trekked from their NYC apartment across the US in pursuit of locations and people to play with. The result was this album, a mixture of covers performed with friends and recorded in different spaces and places, away from the studio and often outdoors. Along with the seemingly “casual” setting of the recordings, which perfectly praises the ordinary life that we have so quickly gone back to taking for granted, the tracks have a unique character gifted through their refreshingly original arrangements. The lineup for the closing track, Steve Miller Band’s “Swingtown”, for instance, is Turner with Rock E Bassoon – an electric bassoon group. Other personal favourites from this album are “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (originally by The Flaming Lips) and “Shark Smile”, which was recorded with Reina del Cid and Toni Lindgren (who I had the pleasure of seeing perform alongside Turner and Carson McKee – a pair formerly known as The Other Favourites – at the Brudenell Social Club, in Leeds). That being said, my favourite picks with most likely be different tomorrow and the day after that; it’s best if you just go and listen for yourself.
Before you go and listen to it, however, you should know that the album doesn’t just come in an audible standard album form. On Turner’s YouTube, there’s a playlist of the album that has each track listed as an episode. This is because each of these episodes includes the recording (with live footage) and a video travelogue with an overdubbed commentary. Better than liner-notes, this series offers an insight into their journey to record, something of the experiences that they shared with each other and the collaborators, outside of the recordings, and context behind the choices of locations (for example, go and check out Ep. 11: The Valleys – Electrelane/Verity Susman, feat. Butler Chamber Singers). For you and I, as outsiders, this format gives us relatable stories and appeals to our fascination/appreciation for the recording process (or it does for me at least). At the time of the release, the episodic nature of the YouTube series was a source of genuine excitement for me and my mates who were also following in the journey. Though the tracks are available on demand now, the narrative is still clear, and it still draws me back to listen to the album. That is that music is to be shared and its worth travelling the world for (or at least the width of the United States). It puts travelling across Newcastle to play a gig into perspective.
Waxing Lyrical 