Beans on Toast shuffles into double figures with A Bird in the Hand, and on album number ten the prolific indie folk singer shows some signs of maturing; much like a fine wine, he may have developed some more sophisticated overtones, but at the end of the day he’ll still get you drunk.
After somehow managing to give himself the perfect name (appropriate at any time of day; everyone loves him and people that don’t are bizarre; uniquely British) Jay McAllister has been mining a rich vein of festival folk songs by turns tongue-in-cheek, politically inclined and whimsically beautiful – and it’s that latter category on which Beans expands on A Bird in the Hand, released as is tradition on December 1st (hereafter to be known as Beans on Toast Day).
A running theme here is the birth of his daughter, and the moving ‘Magic’ is a tender and frank account of her difficult entry into the world. It’s a world Beans is still determined to light up with the simple positivity and joy to be alive which spans pretty much his entire back catalogue. ‘Watching the World Go By’ is a wide-eyed illustration which extolls the virtues of doing exactly that, and ‘Good Health & Happiness’ is similarly optimistic while benefitting from a full-band backing, a nod to the return of Ben Lovett (Mumford & Sons) to Beans’ production chair, which is this time set up in London’s legendary Church Studios
Occupying the middle part of the Venn diagram Beans draws up for himself is one of the album’s true highlights, the disarmingly simple and utterly endearing ‘Here at Homerton Hospital’, a heartwarming run-down of the hospital’s diverse staff – you can all but picture Beans ambling from person to person to get their stories and painstakingly stitching them together into uncomplicated rhymes. It’s classic Beans, and if we’re being brutally honest, it’s that stage-whisper humour and quiet, dry despair at the sorry state of 2018 shown on tracks like ‘Alexa’ – part Black Mirror prediction, part irreverent paean to Amazon’s insidious technology – and the anti-plastic anthem ‘Bamboo Toothbrush’ which mark the real high points of the record.
But anyone blaming Beans for moving slightly on needs a slap and a reminder that by album ten, and especially in the wake of becoming a father for the first time, one of the unsung heroes of British music is more than entitled to do whatever he wants. And the fact that he does it so well means all we can do is count down to December 1st 2019.
Words - Joe Ponting
Beans On Toast
Available from 1 December 2018, via Beans on Toast Music