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STEPHEN FEARING & ANDY WHITE Fearing & White Lowden Proud LOWD20111


“You can’t count on anybody any more”, Fearing and White warble on the fifth track in. Fortunately you can count on them, two of roots music’s freer thinkers and do-it-right musicians, to produce an album which goes all the way to answering those cynics who’d just ask ‘why?’ So maybe they’re spot on when they observe that reliability is fast becoming as rare as hen’s teeth, though each has a pedi- gree that other guitar toters rightly envy, and if any duo could produce a slap-on-the-back buddy album it’s them. You need an atlas to keep track of the background: from Ulster via Australia to Canada – why, boys, we’re clear across the Pacific and the Commonwealth – their shared history involves touring, writing, more touring and then a bit more touring, until just when they’d almost given up the idea of recording, enter Lowden Proud Records who duly stumped up for this album.


What did they get for their troubles? I should think the label’s just a bit chuffed. These songs are damned catchy with hooks aplenty. Echoes of The Beatles and the late Gerry Rafferty and a healthy dose of strummed pop-folk crowds tracks like Say You Will and You Can’t Count On Anybody Anymore. Under The Silver Sky is a bit grittier and spits rock’n’roll while Andy White goes all emerald and becomes a misty-eyed home- boy with Celtic humour infused throughout Heart O’The Morning. Neither he nor Fearing have a particularly up-and-at-’em vocal but the easiness of these songs which bounce around as affable musical tennis means that’s not even an issue.


The whole thing is a huge bear hug of a recording, Stephen Fearing proving that he can crank out lead runs while Andy White produces some great rubbery bass lines and one Ray Farrugia, a musical associate of the fine Mary Gauthier, keeps the beat. Lyrically the whole hangs together with a certain longing – wistful, you could even say – “if we knew then what we know now” (as one line runs). October Lies is pretty close to regret, though they always manage to steer pro- ceedings to the sunny side of up.


Decently packaged too, Fearing & White is great for both car and lounge. I bet the pair had a ball recording and touring it, as a state- ment of intent it’s a huge thumbs up.


www.fearingandwhite.com Simon Jones VARIOUS ARTISTS


France: Corsica Anthology of Profane Songs and Music Ocora/Radio France C560234/35 (Double album and book)


The first thing that strikes one about this is the sheer quality of this whole production. A 112-page hardback book printed with many fine colour photos on high quality glossy paper with fascinating detail in French, Corsi- can and English, with the two CDs slipped inside the front cover. The book gives an introduction to the various strands of Corsi- can song or at least the non-religious side of it. Perhaps the majority of this tradition, one of the richest in Europe, is religious. Reading the synopsis of each song, it is difficult to agree with the “Profane” of the title which would seem to imply that the songs are somehow sacrilegious or even blasphemous. Perhaps ‘Secular’ would be a better descrip- tion of them.


All Corsican traditional singing has been unaccompanied, whether solo or, more typi- cally in three part harmony. Much of it, partic- ularly the solo singing, is highly decorated. Most of the songs are medium-paced or slow


and all the songs, whatever the subject mate- rial seem to call for the singers’ delivery full of intense emotion. For sustained listening plea- sure, therefore, some of the songs here are presented with accompaniments which has a leavening effect. Interspersing the songs with Corsican dance tunes also adds a considerable lightening to the proceedings with their rela- tively simple effective tunefulness.


Damien Delgrossi ponders the introduc- tion of flutes, mandolins, guitars and even (whisper it) accordeons to the detriment of the native pifana, pirula and cialamedda before concluding that the greater range and power of the modern instruments probably offers the musicians more. It sounds like island thinking to me.


This lavish book and CDs could teach you everything that you want to know about this strong tradition. It also teaches us that Radio France and Ocara are producing accounts of their regional traditions in a way that the BBC does not even contemplate in the UK.


www.kiosque.radiofrance.fr Vic Smith


LEPISTÖ & LEHTI Radio Moskova Aito AICD 017


It’s remarkable how attractive audiences around the world find this, on the face of it, simple accordeon and double bass duo. But there’s an involving lyricism and complete- ness to their playing, a warmth in the original tunes they make that evolve from Finnish tra- ditional music, including tango, and expand to touch other traditions.


Markku Lepistö, long one of Finland’s finest players of the diatonic push-pull melodeon-type accordeon and the bigger chromatic button accordeon, and bassist Pekka Lehti came together while playing with Värttinä, and in doing so seem have worked out that just an accordeon and bass can not only cover the sound spectrum pretty effectively but be drawn out into some sounds and interactions they wouldn’t be prompted to try in a bigger band.


This album projects their charm and inno- vative musical ease with one another, and the booklet notes, short though they are, give just enough context for each item in a pleasing varied, rich-sounding set that often has echoes from their not overly-distant youths. In Snadina Lehti’s nonchalant whistling, Ennio Morricone film-score style, over a slabs of rolling melody, is inspired by his memory of whistling to dispel fear when walking home as a child alone through a dark forest. The title track recalls his listening in the 1970s to Radio Moscow on a valve radio, and wrecking


Lepistö & Lehti


the same radio when playing bass guitar through it in the subsequent decade’s punk rock. The opener is a waltz for a present-day two-year-old by Lepistö, and the album ends with a gentle traditional march that he remembers as played and sung by the local brass band and choir during his childhood.


The likeableness of the music carries through to the CD pack itself, an innovative piece of cardboard-folding by a Swedish manufacturer that protects and presents the CD in a way that neatly mirrors the folding of the accordeon bellows printed on it.


www.aitorecords.com Andrew Cronshaw


RYAN’S FANCY


What a Time – A 40 Year Celebration Singsong Productions SS 02303


An important release although while Ryan’s Fancy would hardly qualify for household name status internationally, in Canada their status was legendary. An Irish migrant trio formed in Toronto, they based themselves in St Johns, Newfoundland, in 1971. They became local favourites through concerts, and TV series and recorded 12 albums before disbanding in 1983. Ryan’s Fancy’s unique point lay in their immersion in the local New- foundland and Labrador repertoire gleaned from recording local singers and musicians on their home ground.


Restoring a colloquial repertoire to mainstream culture, they inspired bands like Great Big Sea, Barra MacNeils, The Fables, and Irish Descendants. Dubliners Dermot O Reilly and Fergus O’Byrne and Tipperary-born Dennis Ryan captured post-Dubliners/Furey- sesque vigour glazed with Lightfoot romanti- cism, and distilled a rugged warmth which characterised their live shows.


Apart from a 2001 compilation Songs From The Shows, featuring colloquial New- foundland repertoire, Ryan’s Fancy’s back cat- alogue remained mysteriously unissued on CD until What A Time. With 42 tracks gleaned from 12 albums it captures their enthusiasm and post-ballad-boom viguour. The songbag veers from raucous choruses of Fella From Fortune and the Irvinesque Jackie Tar – which resembles a Sweeney’s Men outtake – to Denis Ryan’s unaffected balladry on Star Of Logey Bay all shot through with rustic gutsi- ness. What a Time neatly chronicles Ryan’s Fancy’s achievements.


www.ryansfancy.com John O’Regan SANDY DENNY


19, Rupert Street Witchwood Media WMCD2053


Let’s be up front; this is a late 1960s home tape, and despite all manner of modern digi- tal trickery and engineering at Abbey Road, it remains just that. Basically 19, Rupert Street, – the residence of Alex Campbell – captures an evening when Sandy Denny, a temporary guest over the border for a few gigs and TV work, fresh from sessions with The Strawbs, sat with her hosts in a fireside song swap. What is significant is that passing Dane Carsten Linde just happened to be hulking round a reel-to-reel. Dutifully he found a spare tape and pressed record and bingo! While a copy remained within the Campbell clan for decades, the memory of its existence was only revived recently when Dave Cousins unearthed Linde after circuitous enquiries.


Duly presented in digi-pack with notes and background, the result is an attractive package for those who know their Denny and long to know more of the person than the musician. No doubt her voice is the centre of


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