Den Miller and Gabriel Moreno - two singer-songwriters that stand out from the crowd

Den Miller's album
'Join All The Dots'

This summer, for the third year in a row, I’ll be attending the Purbeck Valley Folk Festival in Dorset. The line-up includes a lot of great acts – Senegalese kora virtuoso Seckou Keita, Quebec folk powerhouse Le Vent du Nord and exquisite folk Americana duo Hannah Saunders & Ben Savage – not to mention another of my favourite duos Good Habits (who’ll also be collaborating with the trio The Trouble Notes in the guise of Good Trouble!)

But I’m particularly excited about the return to Purbeck of two of my favourite singer-songwriters, Den Miller and Gabriel Moreno.

I first saw Den Miller on the Purbeck Rising stage two years ago and was struck by his humour, his songwriting skill and the fact he performed live, not only with guitar and piano but also with the much-underrated autoharp. Den is from Keighley in Yorkshire and there’s something in his North of England intonation that reminds me of the rather unfashionable songsmith Gilbert O’Sullivan. I’m very fond of unfashionable singer-songwriters and Den’s style has similarities with other artists from the 1970s and early 1980s, artists like Duncan Browne, Clifford T Ward and Dan Fogelberg.

Den Miller

Den is about to release a much-anticipated new album – much-anticipated because its predecessor, 2021’s Join All the Dots, is an absolute gem. For me, the standout track is It Matters If It Matters to You. It could be bracketed with The Roches’ song, Keep On Doing What You Do/Jerks On The Loose, in that it seems to me to be a hymn to taking joy in persevering at one’s art,  with its rousing chorus: “It matters if it matters to you / Don’t expect anyone to care the way you do / cos nothing really matters like it matters when it matters to you / you know all the things you’ve been through / You’ve joined all the dots to get where you’ve got to / And nothing really matters like it matters when it matters to you...”

Opening track Too Many Choices is typical of Den’s skill at making political points with great humour, not to mention his ability to cram as many words as possible into a verse. One of the verses comments on the current plethora of singer-songwriters: “Once upon a time your tribe sang songs, a couple of dozen that everybody knew / Each one special enough to hand on, as each generation came through / and now every dumb singer-songwriter comes to add to the millions already around / and you cling to the hope as you listen that it may just be the one that’s saying something new and profound...” 

Den’s forthcoming album, out this autumn, is called Bless the Rains, many of the songs inspired by the time he’s spent in Kenya. I look forward to hearing the new songs and to seeing Den live at Purbeck once again.

Gabriel Moreno

Gabriel Moreno is another artist I’ve championed on this blog. I first discovered Gabriel’s music through his 2022 album The Year of the Rat. I then had the pleasure of seeing him live at Purbeck (both as part of a ‘songwriters’ circle’ and performing with his band The Quivering Poets.) It’s wonderful that he’ll be back at Purbeck this year and, amazingly, since I last saw him live, Gabriel has not only released another outstanding album, Wound in the Night, but he’s also published his twelfth collection of poetry, Heart Mortally Wounded By Six Strings. Gabriel is a Gibraltarian singer-songwriter and poet, currently based in London. He's often compared with Leonard Cohen. This is partly because there aren’t that many singer-songwriters who are also respected published poets but, stylistically too, there are similarities both musically and lyrically. Gabriel plays a nylon-stringed guitar and his arrangements often use a simple piano and bass accompaniment, sometimes with female backing vocals. The title track of Wound in the Night is a deep, dark waltz which could be a cousin to Cohen’s Take This Waltz.

While comparisons with Cohen are natural, Gabriel has also been compared (in a sometimes-snooty way) to Peter Sarstedt. Again, as a fan of unfashionable singer-songwriters, I would suggest there is definitely something about the timbre of Gabriel’s voice which sounds like Peter Sarstedt – but there’s more to it than that. Sarstedt was far more than a 'poptastic' one-hit wonder; he had a talent for striking, poetic lyrics and song titles. For example, in his 1968 song, I Am a Cathedral, Sarstedt muses: “I am balanced well, you see / I am a Cathedral locked in stain glass windows / I am a Cathedral dimly lit...” Sarstedt was also a distinctively pan-European singer-songwriter, singing about boulevards and St Moritz and Don Quixote; he was an internationalist, not just an English songwriter.

Gabriel Moreno's album
'Wound In The Night'

It’s fascinating to listen to the songs on Gabriel's Wound in the Night and to read the poems in Heart Mortally Wounded By Six Strings – there’s a definite continuity between the two works. A recurring theme is the tension between making art and needing to make a living. In Gabriel’s song Suzanne Valadon the songwriter seeks counsel and inspiration from the ghost of the dead painter but ends up, it seems, being rebuked by her: “She says I’m a fool, a thief and a mule for I’m stuck to the stool of making a buck – if it’s not in your heart then don’t stand in the light...” Presumably, if you stand in the light singing something that’s not in your heart then, to paraphrase Den Miller,  you’re just one of those dumb singer-songwriters with nothing new or profound to say.

Likewise, in his extended poem Six Strings, Gabriel underlines the need for poetry and songwriting to be authentic, heartfelt: “Strum. Strum. Strum. / The blue guitar weeps / ‘coz you love cliches. / A mystic bird plummets / every time you strum / with a sterile limb.” 

Gabriel's poetry collection
'Heart Mortally Wounded
By Six Strings'

Birds – mystic or otherwise – feature heavily. One of the songs on the album is Origami Bird – “The origami bird, wrapped up in the night, glides in crazy patterns of light...” In Gabriel's poem The Sparrow, the bird seems to represent an idea that the poet can either let go of or try to capture: “I am a fool for freeing the sparrow./ More of a fool for keeping it bagged. / Just because you like how it glides / does not mean it belongs to you.”

Both Gabriel and Den are skilled practitioners of words and music. They often express profound, funny, important things about the position of the artist in a world of inequality and materialism where poetry and music can help us (to paraphrase another of Gabriel’s songs)  to open the “shutters on our eyes.”

Den Miller’s Join All the Dots was released in 2021. His new album Bless the Rains will be launched in September 2024. Gabriel Moreno’s Wound in the Night was released in 2023 and Heart Mortally Wounded by Six Strings was published in 2023 by Patuka Press.