James Smith is a man embedded in independent music. Recording under the moniker Good Good Blood, Smith has released a handful of EPs and albums, and his work as head of Fox Food Records has seen him help an array of artists—from Nice Legs and Oh, Rose to Monarch Mtn. and Fair Mothers—do the same. Such a role at the coalface of independent art, especially at a time when such endeavours are undervalued to the point of insult, requires a certain temperament. The ability to persevere in the face of despair, to find hope in the smallest moments, and value in the process of small actions.
In an age of financial insecurity, pandemics and climate collapse, such a mindset becomes all the more pertinent. Indeed, much of Smith’s music seems tied to this tension—the balance between exploring pain and offering comfort, wanting to open up a space that can encompass vulnerability and sanctuary. If there’s nothing to be hopeful about in reality, then one must look to the potential of things to come. At Your Mercy, the second Good Good Blood album released by Team Love Records, develops and expands these sensibilities, looking past what is in search of what could be. In doing so it forms the fullest, most varied Good Good Blood record to date.
We’ve previously described the music of the Fox Food canon as “heartfelt, experimental, bound not by expectation or convention but rather some gut-level intuition,” work carved out of a tradition of collaboration and solidarity. “Together, the elements coalesce into an intangible yet sustained sense of spirit, something far more powerful and lasting than anything done alone.” Whether Smith instilled or inherited this spirit is unclear, but what is apparent is how he now holds it openly and proudly.
As with previous albums, At Your Mercy sees Smith enlist the talents of an array of musicians he met through Fox Food Records. “All I had when I started Fox Food Records was a goal to somehow build a community of like minded artists who could maybe collaborate on music and create cool things,” Smiths says. “The fact that it has all happened so organically and without any real conscious effort, and that it has subsequently led me to make music with so many amazing artists and friends, is just mind boggling to me.”
Such an organic approach appears key to Smith’s personality, and the music of Good Good Blood possesses an equally intuitive and immediate sensibility. “There wasn’t really any intention or purpose behind writing the songs,” he explains. “They just sort of happened. I don’t really have any recollection of writing them, in the sense of struggling with a lyric or a word or whatever. If I had struggled to write them I’d have given up.” Considered development and reworking might lead to airtight, polished songs, but Smith sacrifices such mechanical practice in order to preserve the warm urgency of human communication. “The words just seemed to fit onto the melody really quickly, with little effort. I guess, maybe it is a subconscious thing.”
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The aesthetic was facilitated by the conditions in which the album was crafted. Smith created At Your Mercy at home. With a full-time job and four kids, he was forced to record in the brief pauses in life, cobbling the songs together in the too-small lulls when the children were in bed and work was done for another day. Far from trying to polish over this fact, Smith has left in the textures of life—the footfall and creaking, the small commotion of family—and the result is a collection of songs woven out of the very same spirit of togetherness.
With this present tense, the album exists in a kind of suspended state where what is lost is missed dearly, and what is to come carries no small amount of terror. But in the gap between nostalgic mourning and the trepidation of forward motion lies an ever-present light, a small kernel of hope that refuses to disappear. It might seem strange for a record so anchored to the present to owe so much to both the past and the future, but then perhaps that’s all the present is—a collection of hopes and regrets, marbled into one experience.
“People do tell me regularly that they get a mixed bag vibes from my songs,” Smith says. “Sadness and hope are the main two.” And the juxtaposition is not as counterintuitive as it might first appear. “For me, sadness and hope can go hand in hand,” he continues. “Without sadness or loss or pain there can’t be any hope. We have to hope for a better feeling or situation or whatever because that is what keeps us all keeping on.”
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At Your Mercy is out now via Team Love Records and you can get it from the Good Good Blood Bandcamp page.