Jackie Leven – Creatures of Light & Darkness (Cooking Vinyl)

Reviewing the album in The Independent on 5 July 2001, Andy Gill calls it “another fine offering” that builds on the (artistic) success of the previous year's Defending Ancient Springs and uses much the same group of musicians: David Thomas (the “Ubu-man”, of Pere Ubu), the former James trumpeter Andy Diagram and the former Christian Henry Priestman.

Leven's recurrent interests of poetry, people and a heightened sense of place dominate, Gill says, particularly where they touch on gender differences and relations between parents and children. “Hidden World Of She” and “Billy Ate My Pocket”, in which the narrator's adulterous leanings are spookily laid bare by a horse's bite, wield the mythopoeic power of traditional folk forms. “My Spanish Dad” simply and movingly celebrates small but significant moments shared with Leven's late father.

Gill hears in the arrangements the familiar, folksy Caledonian Soul that Leven has made his own. On “Rainy Day Bergen Women”, Michael Cosgrave's accordion and David Thomas's melodeon add warmth and mystery; Thomas's coughing fit and glimpses of the eponymous women combine into a gestalt apprehension of the death of Leven's father. The most striking song, though, is “The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ”, another paternal rumination in which the saviour laments a solitude that persists despite his apparently limitless powers. The verdict is clearly positive.