For Now, Anyway; Gus White’s Debut Album

Featured Image: Barbora Mrazkova

My apologies, for Marlborough’s singer-songwriter Gus White’s debut album For Now, Anyway has been sitting on the backburner, and it’s more than worth a quick mention…..

Gus White is a respected folk musician, record producer, festival organiser, and community maker with a deep love for the rooted and the heartfelt. His production credits are the string that ties together an emerging scene that refers to itself as Third Wave Folk, involving a collective of artists which record with Gus at his Wiltshire studio. This includes microtonal and genre-fluid rising-star Maddie Ashman, folk singer Minna, and UK folk-charting artist Ann Liu Cannon. The latter is our connection, fondly reviewing Ann Liu’s album Clever Rabbits back in July.

Though, in the short wintery month this album has been simmering it’s made number twenty-six on the Official Folk Album Charts, making Gus rightfully charting too. An initial listen from yours truly and I can understand why. I do declare it as instant as Douwe Egberts’ Pure Gold, only in rapture rather than coffee! It’s chock full of cool vibes, that breezy feelgood Sunday morning acoustic which is too darn soothing it’s impossible to criticise. As for Gus’s barista skills, I’ve no confirmation, but going on his music, I could take a wild guess he’s a tea fellow.

Eleven songs strong, put the kettle on yourself, and allow Gus to get on doing his sublime thing! There’s no rise and fall, the melodies flow like the Iguazu Falls. If I pick out individual elements into Gus’s melting pot, like the doo-wop-ish structure of middle-track Terrible Things, the bluesy guitar picking in the following song, Head Held High, or jazz drum percolate in Please, Forgive Me, they’re all so subtly placed. If Gus defines it Third Wave Folk, that’s what it is; a composition borrowing from Americana and English folk, but neither whole; a gorgeous cherrypick from both. It has the universal folk-rock feel of Goerge Harrison and Cat Stevens, and is equally as uplifting.

Though some themes are negative, the overall ambience is pessimistic; if you’ve a bad day, so what? Watch the rain trickle down the window outside with that lukewarm brew in a slightly stained chipped mug, listen to this and contemplate, life goes on, you’re rising above it.

If the penultimate song on For Now, Anyway, After So Long is rinsed in a dejected romantic memory, Gus carries it as skilled as Tom Petty, and the final song Still Learning lifts the spirit one final time like a contemporary Dr Hook, with that beguiling cheerful chorus. It departs your ears leaving you aching for more; a beautifully and skilled production from someone who comes across as a modest genius tea-drinker. Gus produced, mixed and mastered For Now, Anyway, a defining statement as a songwriter and a prime example of his meticulous production work.

Authentic too; recorded in 2021, with a live band of friends and local musicians, Gus White approached this stunning album like any other project, stating he was “trying to capture the magic, and the essence, of the song in a single live performance, in the way real instruments and human voices blend when left to their own devices.”

Gus, also a member of folk band Dead Pages, is co-organiser of Late Spring Folk Festival, which celebrated its third iteration this summer at Dummer Down Brewery near Micheldever, since forming at a Wiltshire pub venue. This year’s is Saturday 23rd May. If he showcases this album there it’s worth the reasonable ticket stub alone.

For Now, Anyway is out now on Man Made Tigers. Available to buy on CD & vinyl exclusively from Sound Knowledge in Marlborough and is available across streaming platforms. Don’t procrastinate like me, as I’m sorry I did now I’ve heard it.