Mysterious Ways

Close to a decade had elapsed since Steve Ashley's last album, but his return to action proved he'd lost neither his warm likeability nor his gentle melancholia in the meantime. Mysterious Ways is a collection of brilliantly contrasting moods. The opening "Back on the Road Again" is Ashley's statement of intent — "I've been sitting too long beside that cosy fireside...I wanna be back on the road again"; and the band behind him sounds so exuberant that you can almost smell the fries and taste the diesel. But there's a hint of homesickness just hanging around the hook and, as Mysterious Ways gathers speed, that musical contradiction recurs again and again. "Living in the USA" might sound jovial, and the lyrics are certainly eminently smirk-worthy. But an Englishman's lament for his homeland's slide into fast food and faster culture is not a laughing matter, anymore than the locomotive rhythms of "Same Old Stories" can blind us to the social apocalypse that looms through the lyrics. It's not all made of trip-wires, of course. "Loveblind," all bassy swoops and twinkling peaks, is almost unbearably haunting, while "Summer's Done" (cut with Fairport's Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg) is as sad as the end of the season should be. And "The Lord Moves in Mysterious Ways" is a strutting, strumming hoedown, complete with gospel girlies, and a wizard guitar solo over the fade. Mysterious Ways does not reach the same peaks of intimacy that hallmark Ashley's other albums, although that's more a production issue than a musical one. It is certainly the most polished of all his releases, and the listener misses the homespun feel of its predecessors (and successors). Its isolation in the catalog — his first new release in eight years, and the last for eleven — also counts against it in terms of overall continuity. But period reviews described it among the highlights of the folk-rock year, and it will not let you down.