Jackie Leven

★★★★ Straight Outta Caledonia SCHOOL DAZE. CD/DL/LP

Cherry-picking the voluminous back-pages of Kirkcaldy, Fife’s great outsider songwriter.

“Jackie, this is not 1967 and you are not The Beatles,” said Cooking Vinyl’s Martin Goldschmidt when Leven sought to launch many LPs in quick succession. Nothing, not even strangulation in a street assault or the heroin addiction he overcame, could stem Leven’s 40 albums-plus flow, until he died from cancer in 2011 aged 61. This thoughtful comp, with sleevenote nod from friend and fan Ian Rankin, is a timely Leven awareness campaign, showcasing his fearless lyrical acuity on The Sexual Loneliness Of Jesus Christ and the self-explanatory, bleakly beautiful Single Father. The emotional honesty of Leven’s songs – witness the deft live version of social deprivation portrait Poortoun – creeps up on you, transporting and unsettling via a mellifluous voice with horn-like articulations. Though budgetary restrictions slightly hamstrung his recordings at times, more people need to hear Leven’s stark, poetic truths. James McNair