“Don’t confuse somebody who lives each day like it’s his last” - the first of many wise words from Phantom Band frontman Rick Anthony, who makes his solo debut here as Rick Redbeard. When heading the Glasgow swamp rockers Anthony calls himself Richard The Turd, occasionally hiding behind a suit of armour while his band chug their way to oblivion. As Redbeard he’s stripped naked, just him and a guitar, writing timeless, hearty folk songs that could soundtrack a western (provided it was shot in west Scotland).
No Selfish Heart is made of quiet, contemplative tunes, laced with shattering home truths but recorded in the front room of his mum’s house. Old Blue uses acoustic guitar, scratchy violins and Anthony’s sister on backing to echo the Bluetones, confirming all this will fade away (or in this case, “We will both turn into the sea”), while We All Float pulses out piano notes and images of inner frailty (“Eggshell hearts light enough to float/But so easily broke”). A Greater Brave and its twinkling guitar play and roadside imagery make it ideal for a rural romantic escape - if The Wicker Man had a love scene, one that didn’t involve Britt Ekland’s overdubbed singing or graveyard orgies, this would be the music.
Despite its folky formula there’s enough inventiveness on No Selfish Heart to peg Anthony out as so much more than just a sad bloke with a plaid shirt. A cheeky but macabre storyteller, he slips in grotesque ideas by playing the instruments so gently you think you’re getting ambience, but instead get a piece of work like Any Way I Can. Frisking its way to a strong chorus through electric guitar, it shifts into something darker as Anthony realises the girl he’s serenading is a throat-slasher, singing a defiant “I’m gonna love you anyway” as she chokes the life out of him. If you’ve ever had a mate who won’t be talked out of a painful relationship, play him this and watch him embrace singledom. The lighter Now We’re Dancing and its tapping, hypnotic guitar gives us dance instructions hidden in the beat, while Clocks moves from drowsy dirge to beautifully overlapping organs, so evocative of a sunrise against uninterrupted landscape it could take you to Australia if you ignore the Aberdeenshire accent.
No less potent than his hi-jinx with the Phantom Band, No Selfish Heart is a penetrating, genuinely heartfelt folk album, one that draws a square on the ground and doesn’t leave it. Glimmering with pearls of wisdom and spiced with outrageousness - on Cold As Clay (The Grave), we hear the lyric “The fools are nearly on us now; I see them with their flaming torches, their sharpened knives, their baying hounds and howling wives/And you are as cold as the clay on the banks of the stream as I lay down by thee…” yep, it’s a necrophiliac love song - it shows Anthony as maturing but still starkly honest songwriter, and also teaches you how you can get grisly murder stories onto Radio 2: by repeatedly slipping romantic bombshells and tearjerking pats on the back around your guitars like raindrops.
