f70 The album opens convincingly enough


with Raigmore with edgy fiddles, bagpipes and some interesting bass lines from Mike Katz, but the following treatment of Otis Redding’s That’s How Strong My Love Is fails to convince as does their version of Song Composed In August (more usually know as Now Westlin’ Winds). The tune sets fare rather better than the songs but the usual ‘sit up and take notice’ liveliness of past albums seems to have gone MIA.


Maybe it’s too long settling down the new line-up in the studio, maybe they are finding Alan Reid a hard act to follow, but this isn’t one of the best Battlefield Band albums by a long chalk and sounds occasion- ally as though they are just going through the motions. Pick some of the tracks at ran- dom and you wouldn’t necessarily guess who the band is: not a trait one normally associ- ates with the band. And to be fair, if this was a debut album from a new outfit it would be reasonably noteworthy, but the current line- up has a way to go to match former glories.


www.battlefieldband.co.uk Bob Walton


JACKIE OATES Saturnine ECC Records ECC004


What was it… just over four years ago when Jackie Oates left the bosom of the Unthanks for pastures new and, at the time, very uncer- tain? In fact, her feet have barely touched the ground since – three albums under her own name, guest appearances on various others, a place in The Imagined Village, her own little band, a reputation that’s grown rapidly to the point that she must now surely be consid- ered among the highest echelons of the mod- ern wave of British folk acts… oh and a range of cosmetics named after her too.


Jackie Oates


Each of her albums has marked a decisive move on from the previous one with the odd maverick sidestep, notably on Hyperboreans, produced in 2009 by brother Jim Moray, which heavily featured Alasdair Roberts and included a slightly controversial cover of the Sugar Cubes’ Birthday.


Moray and Roberts also pop up on this hearty fourth album – along with the likes of Belinda O’Hooley, Karen Tweed, Barney Morse-Brown and the full-blooded male vocal group The Clacque – which Oates says has resulted from a “frenzy of current fascinations from viols, hand bells, eccentric percussion to the Saturn return, Joseph Cornell and Alphonse Mucha…” So there you have it (and just in case you were wondering, Alphonse Mucha was a Czech art nouveau painter).


The sleeve design is certainly colourful and striking and there are indeed hand bells, viols and eccentric percussion which lends a slightly left-field atmosphere to the whole thing that a year or so ago would probably have been called ‘nu-folk’. Paradoxically, the material itself largely concentrates on some of the folk revival’s most hardy traditional standbys – The Sweet Nightingale, Marrow Bones, The Trees They Are So High, Brigg Fair – and a swift glance at the track list might give the impression of a very safe album. This is offset, however, by several fac- tors… not least the persuasive intimacy of the Oates voice, which has grown immeasurably in confidence and appeal since her self-titled first solo album.


Delving deep into her adopted home, the west country of England, for influence and inspiration, she’s added guile, mystery, quaintness and indeed eccentricity to the alluring charm and simplistic style at the crux of her initial appeal. A tender, piano-led ver- sion of The Trees They Are So High closes with Elizabeth Stewart eerily reciting a Cornish


language poem, which is in turn followed by an oddly raucous selection of tunes apparent- ly based on a Finnish tango. She also plays Hardanger fiddle on a delicate Scarborough’s Fair Town, which is in turn followed by a dainty set of Cornish dance tunes. The vaunt- ed hand bells loom large – and very effective- ly – on the spooky ballad Poor Murdered Woman, evoking thoughts of one of her most obvious influences, Shirley Collins, while she rescues from obscurity a little-known but rather wonderful Paul Metsers song IOU. The big vocal guns add fun and substance to Mar- row Bones and Four Pence A Day and before you know it you have been sucked complete- ly into the album’s quirky, faintly unearthly atmosphere. Which, I guess, is what she intended all along.


www.jackieoates.co.uk Colin Irwin


SUSHEELA RAMAN Vel Outerindia/Believe Digital 50990718882-4


I don’t know what’s got into Susheela Raman, but whatever it is, I’m very glad it has. She’s taken her distinctive Anglo-Tamil variation on singer- songwriter-ism and given it a vital injection of rock trance frenzy. On this, her fifth album, long time partner/co-conspirator Sam Mills is present and correct, as is tabla man Aref Durvesh, with Ben Mandelson and Tony ‘Mr Afrobeat Drums’ Allen making guest appear- ances. Raise Up sets the tone, with the manic thrum of Mills’ acoustic guitar beckoning in a wild but catchy Asian flavoured rocker whose “Raise up your hands higher, higher” chorus should (in an ideal world) blare from radios and be yelled along to by festival audiences all summer long. The slow, dreamy Magda- lene has added texture from Kumar Ragu- nathan’s violin and another killer chorus. Paal moves into more traditionally Indian territory and features some lovely vocal twists and turns. Velundu is shuffling Tamil blues.


This is a proper album, where each song complements the last, some (such as those already mentioned) jump straight out, others take their time to take a hold (I’ve just fallen for the delicate Fools with its warm waves of overlapping vocals from Raman and Kartik Ragunathan). Comparisons will be made with PJ Harvey and Patti Smith, but if they are influences, then they’ve been filtered through Raman’s own distinctive sensibility. Long may the spirits take hold of her.


www.myspace.com/susheela.raman Jamie Renton


SÉAN TYRRELL, KEVIN GLACKIN, RONAN BROWNE


And So The Story Goes Cló lar-Connacht CICD185


Three Irish music stal- warts and close friends, who’ve been getting together to play informal sessions


for years, finally unite formally and create one of the year’s more surprising gems. The common misconception that no decent new music is coming out of Ireland is comprehen- sively buried in the intuitive ease of their playing and the thoughtful, unpredictable edge of the songs Tyrrell brings to the party.


We perhaps shouldn’t be surprised.


Tyrrell has long been a singer, songwriter and sometime visionary with a strong eye for a seductive narrative, while Kevin Glackin is a fiddler with the natural strength and richness


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