Jason McNiff

Seventh album from superb finger-picking folkie.

It’s easy to hear in Jason McNiff’s intricate acoustic guitar picking the eight-year shift he put in as a London bar’s resident flamenco player. It’s also no surprise to anyone listening to Dust Of Yesterday that one of his heroes is the late great Bert Jansch, both influences redolent in the pealing chords and tinkling lifts that flow from his fingers with instinctive ease. Lyrically, too, it’s the Britfolk greats of the ’60s and ’70s that he aspires to, Dust Of Yesterday looking back on his life to explore how we all carry our past in our present. On Damaged Woman, for example, McNiff discovers how that flamenco residency impacts his more recent life on the South Coast. And, just as the songs drag the past into the present, so McNiff updates the legacy of his heroes for a modern audience and does them proud.