David Westlake album review

David Westlake  : Play Dusty For Me 

(Cherry Red)

Vinyl | CD | DL

4 out of 5  

Some records arrive with fanfare. Others drift through the cracks, half-glimpsed and half-heard, gathering a quiet mythology among those lucky enough to find them. Play Dusty For Me belongs firmly in the latter camp.

Originally self-released in 2002 on David Westlake’s Mahlerphone imprint after a decade-long retreat from music following The Servants’ 1991 demise, it has spent much of its existence hovering at the margins: briefly available here, quietly reissued there, never quite receiving the audience its quality demanded. Now, thanks to Cherry Red, it surfaces once again. The surprise is not that it has returned, but that it was overlooked for so long.

Written between 1998 and 2001, Play Dusty For Me doesn’t attempt to rekindle the nervy, breathless art rock of Disinterest or Small Time. Instead, it inhabits a more reflective terrain, reconnecting with the emotional vulnerability that made early Servants classics such as “She’s Always Hiding” and their astonishing Peel session in 1986 so affecting. Age and experience have altered the perspective. Where Westlake’s younger self sounded like he was wrestling elegantly with disappointment, these songs seem to emerge from the far side of it, carrying their scars with quiet dignity.

The album’s prevailing mood recalls the bruised twilight beauty of The Velvet Underground‘s third LP. Dan Cross’s guitar drifts through the songs like smoke in a darkened room, while the rhythm section of Cormac and Willis Moore provide an understated framework that never distracts from the writing. Recorded over just two days in Kilkenny, the performances possess an intimacy that feels almost accidental. Nothing here clamours for attention. Instead, the songs reveal themselves gradually, their emotional force deepening with each listen.

And what songs. Westlake remains one of Britain’s most underrated melodic craftsmen, capable of making the difficult appear effortless. “Say When” glides by with the melodic ease of Grant McLennan at his finest, so evocative it feels as though it has always existed, while “Life On The Edge” offers the album’s most immediate pop thrill, its rolling hook destined for repeat play addiction. Even at its most melancholic, Play Dusty For Me never loses sight of the pleasures of classic songcraft (see also “Back on Track”).

For all its hushed beauty, though, Play Dusty For Me isn’t entirely content to remain in the shadows. Just when the album threatens to settle into a uniformly autumnal melancholy, “I Die For Love” and “Patience” arrive trailing a welcome cloud of psych-rock turbulence. Their distorted guitars and gathering sense of unease puncture the prevailing calm, revealing darker currents beneath the record’s composed exterior. They’re not dramatic departures so much as necessary disruptions, broadening the emotional palette without disturbing the album’s coherence.

Westlake’s gift has always been his ability to smuggle heartbreak into immaculate melodies. Here, lines such as “A wound may heal but a scar might stay – time’s a great healer, time’s a big stealer” carry the weight of lived experience without ever lapsing into self-pity. These are songs concerned less with loss itself than with what remains afterwards: the residue, the memory, the small compromises that accompany survival.

If there’s a disappointment attached to Cherry Red’s welcome reissue, it’s that the album hasn’t received the sonic overhaul it arguably deserves. The original recording remains noticeably quiet and slightly veiled, lacking the clarity and presence that a sympathetic remaster might have brought. Yet even this shortcoming becomes oddly bound up with the record’s character. Like the songs themselves, the sound refuses to push forward or demand attention. You have to move towards it rather than the other way round.

The closing pairing of “Hi You” and “Life Goes On” confirms the album’s quietly remarkable quality. The former rides a luminous guitar figure that recalls the reflective grace of late-period Felt, while the latter closes proceedings with a weary but hard-earned optimism. By this point, Play Dusty For Me feels less like a lost album than a hidden one — overlooked not because it lacked quality, but because it was never interested in competing for attention.

Twenty-four years on, Westlake’s anti-industry instincts remain both the album’s curse and its strange advantage. Play Dusty For Me sounds untouched by fashion, driven instead by melody, restraint and emotional truth. Beneath its whisper-quiet exterior lies some of the finest songwriting of Westlake’s career: intimate, bruised, beautifully observed and long overdue for rediscovery.

Neil Davenport is a writer based in London