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Arkansas. The prayerful Once I Had A Home pictures some ruined eastern realm: “Olive trees once grew / Where mounds of rubble stand / A man can feel himself a king / When water flows from well and spring / And peaceful is the land”. Drawing on Irish bard WB Yeats (and the writer Joan Didion), Eliza’s bluesy Slouching Towards Bethlehem envi- sions an impending apocalypse.
The title ballad celebrates the other side of the coin: a love to transcend wars. Whether glimpsing Townes Van Zandt in Mid- night On Raton or her mother’s ghost in Belle Of The Ball, Gilkyson links the personal and the universal. If vibrant, incisive Americana is what you’re after, put the latest Steve Earle aside and just listen to Gilkyson.
www.redhouserecords.com Peter Palmer
FRIBO Happ Fribo Records 00035
It was clear at the impressive London launch gig for this second album that Fribo have developed a lot from a worthwhile meeting between Edinburgh-resident Norwegian Anne Sofi Linge Valdal, singer and very fine player of seljefløyte, the Norwegian version of no-hole overtone whistle, and Scottish musicians led by guitarist/singer Ewan MacPherson. They’re now much more: a punchy, tight, original band with their own material and approach.
The album is to some degree a transition- al one between the band’s original and pre- sent line-ups. Fiddler Sarah-Jane Summers who plays on most of the album, has now left; her replacement, playing on two tracks, is Hannah Read, from Edinburgh but with unusual stylis- tic approaches partly gained by her recent degree-study of American fiddling at Berklee College of Music in Boston. She’s a remarkable player, bringing a new strength to the band, which is now augmented to a quartet by Swedish percussionist Magnus Lindmark.
Some songs and tunes are traditional, but more are originals that while very much shaped by tradition can’t be pinned down to either Scotland or Norway; it’s Fribo-music, ingenious and crafted but also satisfyingly melodically shapely, with plenty of variety of pace. For the full impact of the current band, jump in at track seven, high energy jumping, chopping, squee-ing fiddle and guitar pro- pelling rapid group-vocals in the MacPher- son/Valdal composition Boat Full Of Goats, and let it run onto track eight, a wild seljefløyte- led work-out in Den Kaldsteikte/Seljefløyel.
www.fribo.co.uk Andrew Cronshaw
CORDELIA’S DAD Double Live Own label
There is something quite invigorating about Cordelia’s Dad taking a lilywhite folk song, strangling it to death and then putting it back together as a kind of Frankenstein reanima- tion. God, they can’t half howl the tradition under a full moon. Still, almost 20 years since displaying sonic intentions with How Can I Sleep?, their noise, grunge and feedback once more entices those who would bravely tread the dark side. Truth to tell, although they cre- ated an acoustic alter ego, the electric Hyde to unplugged Jekyll lay just under the surface. Whether it’s sheets of electric hollering or pressed linen sheets at the centre of some age- old Americana, both beasts are paraded here with equilibrium. Noticeable though, even in the midst of the cleanest, starched folk set, Tim Eriksen and Pete Irvine still sing of death, ghostly visitations, life in ruins, addiction, obsession and sex, then nonchalantly follow all that with an uplifting spiritual.
Of course the entity that shows the other face sends all memory of rural acoustics and surging shapenote harmonies to flight and the second CD of this set, a 2007 double-head- er, is the grist, the pulse that really drives the blood-rush, causing American tradition to dis- tort and deform. Jersey City is a rolling, twist- ing thing which has Eriksen’s vocals dueling with spiked guitars and cavernous percussion. Delia takes murder and pathos to new levels of warp, though there are moments of a kind of tenderness in Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still or Leave Your Light On. Ultimately, the strident tones of Will The Circle Be Unbroken perhaps say most, for as war rages around the old Carter family hymnal you know that somewhere in the maelstrom Cordelia’s Dad really care and know about roots and her- itage. After all, they predated Americana and the new psychedelic hippy acoustics so they have some right to play Burke and Hare. This time they promise they’re here to stay. Can’t wait for the next chapter, bring it on. Mean- while this has teeth!
www.cordeliasdad.com Simon Jones
HILARY JAMES English Sketches Acoustics CDACS 059
Born out of a series of concerts based on the English tradition at the Museum Of English Rural Life (MERL) in Reading, English Sketch- es is a whole album of lively, inventive and charming arrangements of (mostly) English traditional song, masterminded by Hilary her- self and given brilliant small-ensemble back- ings involving, inter alia, long-time partner Simon Mayor (on all things mando), Nick Cooper (cello), Phil Fentimen (double bass) and the two Pauls Sartin and Hutchinson (aka Belshazzar’s Feast).
The repertoire is a thoroughly pleasing cross-section of quintessentially English mate- rial, with especially winning treatments of Beneath The Willow Tree, the less-oft-heard ballad Young Benjie and the chiming west- country Bell Ringing Song nestling compan- ionably alongside a gently syncopated Bold Fisherman, with the somewhat awkwardly- titled A Song & Jig For Good Measure here given three bites at the cherry with both a
Hilary James
reprise and a bonus “full, uninterrupted ver- sion” (which is the one to play). As well as the songs of strictly traditional provenance, Hilary’s wonderfully pure voice gives us disc- highlight settings (by Hilary and Simon) of poems by Hardy, Shakespeare and Housman (the latter’s Bredon Hill is intriguingly dark here); there’s even a set of words cobbled- cum-written by Baring-Gould no less, and an idiomatic account of a number from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.
I’m convinced Hilary’s never sounded
better, and her accompanists have the full measure of the settings, if at times there’s a slight suspicion of underplaying their hand in the softer, more refined edges they impart to the texts. This is a significant, and highly per- suasive, addition to Hilary’s already impres- sive catalogue of song recordings, one which is destined to satisfy repeatedly; furthermore, the package design is adorned with Hilary’s own beautifully artistic illustrations.
www.acousticsrecords.co.uk David Kidman
BIG HEAD BLUES CLUB 100 Years of Robert Johnson BGH2-1424.
Robert Johnson was born 100 years ago this May, and Colorado’s Big Head Todd & The Monsters are celebrating with an album of his songs. The revised moniker they’ve adopt- ed reflects the fact that BB King, Hubert Sum- lin, Charlie Musselwhite, Honeyboy Edwards, Ruthie Foster, Cedric Burnside and Lightin’ Malcolm all dropped by to join in.
The result’s a lot better than you’d expect. All too often, albums with a host of superstar chums on board end up as horribly disjointed affairs, and so highly-polished that not a trace of life remains. In this case, though, the core band has a strong enough presence to impose a consistent sound, and many of the guests stick around for more than the usual flying visit. Lightnin’ Mal- colm, for example, adds guitar to five tracks, while Musselwhite’s harmonica is on three. Only King and Sumlin limit themselves to a single track each.
All My Love’s In Vain is a solo rendition
from Todd Park Mohr, using just voice and acoustic guitar, while Honeyboy has only Musselwhite to help him out on Sweet Home Chicago. Both these tracks are fine, but the minimalist approach inevitably prompts comparisons with Johnson’s own recordings, and that’s a battle the BHBC boys were never going to win.
The solid, meaty full-band arrangements prove much more rewarding. The Monsters built their following through constant tour- ing, and there’s no better apprenticeship for a blues band. 25 years into their career, with one platinum album already in the bank, they’ve got the skills, discipline and confi- dence to make this project a genuine tribute to Johnson’s songwriting rather than a cheap attempt to exploit his legend.
Among the guests, King and Sumlin turn
in characteristic performances, with Sumlin’s gravitas underpinning When You Got a Good Friend and King scattering his familiar licks through a funky Crossroads Blues. Musselwhite adds careful, subtle colouring to Come On In My Kitchen and Last Fair Deal Gone Down.
But it’s the lesser-known names who shine brightest. Foster has a background in gospel as well as blues, and her verses of Kind Hearted Woman offer the album’s strongest vocal performance. Lightnin’ Malcolm’s gui- tar work lifts every track it touches, particu- larly when his regular bandmate Burnside adds drums on Preachin’ Blues and If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day.
www.bigheadtodd.com Paul Slade
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