Ed Askew’s singing voice is made for melancholy. When not carrying a melody, his reedy vibrato becomes conversational, telling of a turtle laying her eggs, a baby crying in a cradle, a boy arguing with his girlfriend. The graceful, harpsichord-like tone of his Martin Tiple – a plangent, 10-string ukelele-sized instrument – makes the whole all the more wistful. Askew’s haunting, minor-key contemplations probably aren’t going to win him a wide audience but this, his sixth album in 45 years, brings Marc Ribot and Sharon Van Etten on board as collaborators.
For the World is an album of great beauty; fragile, with an eastern European lilt. Despite being thought of as a folk artist, Askew’s baroque approach is singular. His only musical cousin is Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp, another singer-songwriter consumed by matching mood with a heart-breaking melody.
Despite declaring he does not want to think about the Sixties or Seventies on “Gertrude Stein”, Askew's reputation hinges on his eponymous debut album, released in 1968 by the independent New York label ESP and the next year in the UK by Fontana. He recorded a follow-up in 1970 which was belatedly heard in 2004 but otherwise pursued painting and poetry in his native Connecticut. A cassette album emerged in 1999, and two more in 2008 and 2011. The fans he has picked up include Van Etten and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. For the World is his first album with other musicians. He isn’t buried by them. It remains his album and isn't markedly different to his debut. Now his observations come from age and experience rather than being a man out of place. The touching and subtle For the World is as timeless as it is lovely.
Overleaf: watch Ed Askew introduce For the World, and listen the album’s "Roadio Rose"
