Third album in a row with the same line-up, this is a deeply impressive release.

The Tangent, the project led by Andy Tillison, released their first album, The Music That Died Alone, in 2003, so 19 years ago now. The line-up on that album? Tillison, Guy Manning, Roine Stolt, Sam Baine, David Jackson, Jonas Reingold, and Zoltan Csörsz. Not bad, eh? A veritable supergroup.

So, let us fast forward to 2022, and the band release their twelfth studio album. I have every single one of them, and my writing about music predates the first album, but incredibly I have never put finger to keyboard to discuss The Tangent until tonight. No idea why, really, it is just the way it panned out.

Tillison still has Reingold with him, and aside from Trewavas, I struggle to think of a more complete bass player and effective collaborator with the world’s finest writers and performers. Added to this we have the exceptional Theo Travis on wind, Luke Machin on guitar, and Steve Roberts on the tub-thumping duties, and the band have retained this line-up for a third consecutive album.

Songs From the Hard Shoulder is a very impressive album. It retains much of the critical elements of previous Tangent releases, so an eclectic mix of styles and moods, but is smack bang right in the middle of the third decade of the 2000’s. This is a modern album at its heart and vital in its execution. There are four tracks lasting an hour on the regular release, and if you add the bonus track then a further sixteen minutes. Only one track, Wasted Soul, clocks in below ten minutes.

The Changes is very much within the jazz/fusion universe. This is clearly a song driven by the Covid experience, as with so many pieces of music released this year. The track talks about travelling in a van, not being paid for a gig in the backwaters of Germany and strikes me as the author talking about nothing fundamental changing despite the pandemic which hit Europe, but then a purpose to life again with the prospect of the release of this album post-pandemic. Tillison produces some wonderful chords on his keyboards and lyrically the warmth he feels for his fellow musical travellers is clear. This is the type of track as a young man I would have loathed. Appreciation for this type of progressive jazz music is a maturing taste, I feel (I really did not like much of Lizard or Islands until many years later, for example), and as we move toward the denouement Machin makes his presence felt strongly with some lovely delicate riffs. The closing three minutes is a delight, full of warmth. Just over seventeen minutes long, and not once does it overstay its welcome.

The GPS Vultures is a cracking title for a song and is only five seconds shorter than that which preceded it. GPS stands for Global Positioning System, the satellite navigational system developed by the US of A. There are no words at all, and a seventeen-minute instrumental piece really does have to try hard to keep the listener’s attention throughout. For the first time on the album, you catch hold properly of the gorgeous flute of Travis (and five minutes in we are introduced to his parpy sax), the bass riffs are wicked at times, Roberts keeps things moving along with discrete aplomb, but I do especially love as lead instruments the guitar of Machin interplaying with Tillison’s keys. The bluesy feel to this is delicious. Much of the track is reflective (although the closing section bursts into life with some wonderful guitar work especially), with a musical digital clock mimicking the actions of the tracking system, but we also have some flamenco style guitar as if to emphasise the global nature of the technology. This is a track best listened to on headphones or on a decent system with the volume turned up louder than usual to catch all the nuances at play.

The longest piece on the album, and the highlight to me, is a classic piece, The Lady Tied to the Lamp Post, a twenty-minute plus reflection on the nature and humanity of homelessness. Other sites have provided us with a detailed explanation of the encounter between Tillison and the lady in question, so I will merely add my thoughts without the history. Lyrically, what hits me is the fact that this lady has absolutely nothing in the world aside from the clothes on her back, ignored by the hippy with the long hair finding it easy to leave her behind, but then realising the humanity of the lady with no one in the world tied to a lamppost. What makes this song, lyrically and musically (the saxophone is particularly evocative and beautiful) so impressive is the fact that, unlike many commentaries on the curse of homelessness, it treats the subject with dignity and a personality, as opposed to an easy political hit. It is angry, and rightly so, raging that no one notices when she has moved on, tied to a lamppost with nobody even noticing that she is there, and we ignore the plight of the disparate, dispossessed, and forgotten mass of humanity in poverty and despair every day, reduced to spreadsheet and data sets. That is the overwhelming message of this wonderful song, how such misery has become so commonplace, and the dystopian feel of the music some ten minutes in reflects this perfectly. Richly and deeply impressive music as social commentary. I have embedded below the full version – there is a single edit available as well, but I think this needs to heard as a whole.

Regular album closer (I must be honest, but I am one of those who fails to see much of the point beyond financial needs for bonus tracks) is Wasted Soul. Funk, 70’s soul, get your arse onto that dancefloor, baby! Underscored sax, dirty bass, deep toned voices, brass, this is simply a track which cheers you up.

I have heard the bonus track online, which includes a cover of UK’s In the Dead of Night, and it is good stuff. To conclude for the regular album, though, this is an hour of class and in the hands of less accomplished craftsmen could have been unutterably depressing, but with Tillison and a very impressive, and dare I say it, steady line-up it is rather uplifting in its core.

Highly recommended