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negotiate a dodgy rock opera. The Sacred Temple of Richard Thompson should pray for their souls over this annihilation of Beeswing while the reaction of Kelis and Black-Eyed Peas to the bizarre assaults on Acapella and Meet Me Halfway respectively can only be conjectured. At least they have the decency to spend half the album dismantling their own material – and in isolation Thursday is almost listenable – but the supposedly rip-roaring treatments of the big folk club classic chorus songs Sumer Is Icumen In, When The Old Dun Cow Caught Fire and Hanging Johnny are like evil parodies designed to set back the recon- stitution of folk song several decades. The only good thing to be said about it is the free beer mat that comes with the CD.


www.thefutureheads.com Colin Irwin


DUCK BAKER AND DAKOTA DAVE HULL


When You Ask A Girl To Leave Her Happy Home Arabica CF 14


Richard & Mimi Fariña – Vanguard Boxed VARIOUS ARTISTS


Make It Your Sound, Make It Your Scene – Vanguard Records & The 1960s Musical Revolution Vanguard VANBOX 14


Vanguard Records has fared less well in the historical record than, say, Elektra or Folk- ways – the labels with which it might be com- pared. Yet Seymour and Maynard Solomon’s catalogue of “honest roots music” – the worlds of folk, blues, country (particularly old-timey) and rock music – was simply astounding. During their tenure (1950-1986), they trusted their instincts and took gambles, for example with the blacklisted Weavers, when others had faint hearts.


John Crosby’s discerning 84-track audio- history of the side of the New York-based label represented by Otis Spann, Dave Van Ronk, Doc Watson, Ian & Sylvia, Sandy Bull, Joan Baez, Mimi & Richard Fariña, Frost and 31st Of February open sesames the door to a hoard of treasures really worth marvelling at. Parenthetically, Vanguard also had a live- ly output in areas beyond this compilation’s purview with a classical repertoire including the songs of Gustav Mahler, the Deller Con- sort’s Elizabethan madrigals and PDQ Bach’s Baroque parodies. Before the Welk Maw swallowed the label, the brothers even embraced disco. (Well, I never...) Meanwhile back at this here story, arguably the bedrock ‘honest roots’ Vanguard experience was their Newport Folk Festival recordings. A taste of them here includes The Swan Silver- tones (Oh Mary, Don’t You Weep), Rev Gary Davis (Samson And Delilah), Tom Paxton (Last Thing On My Mind), the Paul Butter- field Blues Band (Born In Chicago), Hedy West (500 Miles) and Bob Dylan (his never- issued 1963 North Country Blues).


This four-CD set’s informative booklet is truly a rare thing. A work of art, it brims over with Crosby’s disquisition, complemented by former Vanguard man Sam Charters’ insight- ful introduction. Visually, Phil Smee’s design stylishly and subtly reinforces the written nar- rative with the likes of contemporaneous adverts and magazine artwork and more. Surprises spring out. Janis (“Orchestra con- ducted by Country Joe”) will probably be a new one to most people. [Woody Allenish subtitles: me.] Or Crosby’s fearlessness/ chutz- pah in programming the rock band Eliza- beth’s shit-on-a-stick You Should Be More Careful. Maybe the surprises will be old mem-


ories gone mushy. Maria Muldaur’s 1965 take on I’m A Woman with Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band lights the way to her monster hit album, Midnight At The Oasis in 1974. Coun- try Joe & The Fish’s Here I Go Again still retains a heightened poignancy. And Country Joe’s closing Kiss My Ass is a stage-wink of inspired programming.


Crosby’s overview and grasp of the Van- guard catalogue is exquisite and far more comprehensive than mine. That said, in the spirit of the hoary reviewing game of saying what isn’t there and, let’s agree mythology permits two Achilles’ heels, might one identi- fy no Hamza El Din (one of Vanguard’s vital world or non-western classical music spring- boards) and the Cleanliness & Godliness String Band (the once-nest of the heroic Hank Bradley, whose 1989 manifesto Counterfeit- ing, Stealing and Cultural Plundering remains worth tracking down)? Despite not being much given to gush, it must be said that Make It Your Sound truly is lusciously gush- worthy indeed.


www.acerecords.co.uk Ken Hunt


THE FUTUREHEADS Rant Nul Records 09CD


Yes, it’s good that highly regarded indie rock band The Futureheads have decided to unleash their inner folk sensibility with an entirely a cappella album. Many others from beyond the folk firmament – Housemartins and Flying Pickets among them – have ably demonstrated the potential impact of the naked human voice even on rock music while innovation and genre development is often gleaned more from those unfamiliar with an artistic form than those close to it.


So take their word for it that this is not a comedic diversion but a serious bid to do something different, whack on Rant with open ears, full of hope and anticipation and…erm…no easy way of saying this, it’s a car crash. A particularly ugly one, too, involv- ing Fisherman’s Friends and The Proclaimers adopting Sunderland accents to play the roles of third-rate floor singers circa 1968.


The singing is bad, the ‘harmonies’ laugh- able and intensity applied with sticking plas- ter to sub-barbershop arrangements that are unworthy of a school fourth form trying to


I just love recordings like this where the par- ticipants could so easily play many more notes and much fancier and flashier if they wanted to. Instead they play the music they choose with great respect and feeling. Most tracks are duets with finger-style guitar (Baker) and flat-picking (Hull), and the tunes range from the very well-known and used – Ragtime Annie, Red Haired Boy, Sil- ver Bells and Billy In The Low Ground –to the more obscure.


One in the more obscure category, Bull


At The Wagon, opens and really sets up the recording. The superb version alternates Baker and Hull taking turns at melody and back-up, as they never once leave the tune, using the texture of their instruments and the strength of their arrangement rather than a thousand passing notes to hold attention. Appropriate to say Ragtime Annie is the next track, with more extra notes than the original tune set out, but not too many, and all in the right place. As an added twist they play the tune in G whereas every other guitar version will be played in C shapes following Doc Wat- son’s 1965 scene setter.


There are many, many more moments to delight. A welcome recording of Monroe’s Lonesome Moonlight Waltz is one of many of his that can be translated to any of the blue- grass instruments and Baker and Hull make it sound as though it was originally written as a guitar duet. Not from me an analysis of each track, though I am tempted. Just an analysis of the CD as a real musical and guitarists’ gem. A rare beast.


www.duckbaker.com www.dakotadavehull.com


John Atkins.


TWO WINGS Love’s Spring Tin Angel TAR 30


An arresting and refreshing collaboration between Scottish-based visual artist and singer Hanna Tuulikki and former Trembling Bells guitarist Ben Reynolds, Love’s Spring offers up a lavish palette of contemporary experimental folk rock.


Most striking on this set of self-penned songs, often drawing lyrically from the well of traditional song, are Tuulikki’s gurgling child-like vocals which tease with their bab- bling-brook winsomeness, only then to make an unexpected predatory swoop, channelling a menacing version of Kate Bush.


Musically, Two Wings explore oft-visited folk rock territory – from prog rock guitar meanderings, medieval recorder textures to a


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