65 f PHIL ODGERS
The Godforsaken Voyage Vinyl Star Records VSRCO001.
Yes, Swill, of The Men They Couldn’t Hang, going by his real name. Some time back he released a short run EP based round Kris Kristofferson’s hymn to hangovers, Sunday Morning Coming Down. A natty little item and so positive was the feedback that yer man began to plot a fuller recording. The Godforsaken Voyage is the result and pretty damn fine it is too. Having a phone book full of big name chums he’s wisely picked the likes of Eliza Carthy, John Jones, Mick Thomas of Weddings Parties Anything to help, as well as Slim from the Boothill Foot Tappers (remember them?) and other MTCH.
What we’ve got is a smart, diverse collec- tion that weaves Odgers’ own compositions in with those of Kristofferson, Gene Clark and Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan. There’s nothing wrong with covering Through The Morning Through The Night when you’re duetting with Carthy, but don’t overlook the canny writing of Mr Odgers himself or chum Paul Simmonds who contributes a couple of point- ed items, Dusty Fields and The Master’s Whip. Whilst Odgers writes from an obviously socialist mindset, this isn’t mere polemics. Rather, the title track itself makes you pause and wonder just why we sent supposed crimi- nals to the other side of the world for the pettiest of offences. “Our trials were a circus, examples we were made,” pretty much sums up his thoughts, yet on Coming Home, an unashamed love song, he’s still defending what’s his: “I’ll keep you out of harm’s reach whatever I do, with you every step of the way.” Elsewhere his lived-in vocals wrap round the mug’s game of betting, too much whisky and emotional cowardice, all related over the kind of rootsy acoustic beat that makes you nod your head and shuffle your feet in appreciation.
Apparently pieced together in a cramped basement in Shepherd’s Bush with old hand Mick Glossop at the desk, The Godforsaken Voyage is direct, charming, honest and oh so truthful. More sometime please Mr Swill
www.tmtch.net Simon Jones TSUUMI SOUND SYSTEM
Floating Letters Tsuumi Sound System TSS003
Finland’s Tsuumi Sound System showcased at last year’s Womex in Thessaloniki, but perhaps didn’t create the waves they might have, part- ly perhaps because of a mix that squashed the twin fiddles too deep in the big eight-piece sound to comply with civic-imposed peak-vol- ume restrictions, but probably mainly because the words ‘sound system’ made many dele- gates assume it was, well, a sound system, not a band. The name comes from the fact that TSS began as the band for folk-dance-rooted Helsinki dance ensemble Tsuumi. Its first album was still linked to the ensemble and under that name, but this, produced by Väsen’s Roger Tallroth, is the third since they branched off as an independent unit.
The first four tracks, while impressively pacey and big, are very notey and tend to wall-of-dense: everything playing at once in complex, winding melodies with a sensation of compression restraining what might reach out and grab. A brief oasis of Bach-like piano opening track five, Twisted Invention, morphs via parallel-harmony fiddles and darabukka into jazzy saxy blowing. The slow, liquid piano, guitar and bowed bass of Minka’s Dream by the band’s founder and accordeon- ist Hannu Kella comes as a serene breather, as does the mid-tempo melody that follows it, Smilla, by piano and harmonium player Pilvi
Järvelä, though even that builds and crescen- dos. Then, as the ear attunes and is drawn into the sound, it’s into the rather splendid fiddle-frenzy of her husband Esko’s Altitude, in the characteristic Kaustinen-Järvelä style of his and co-fiddler Tommi Asplund’s other band, Frigg. And onward to the big swing of saxist Joakim Berghäll’s Silmäkkeessä.
In some ways – just to give an approxi- mate overall impression, and though they’ll probably not thank me for saying it – Tsuumi SS is a sort of heavy Frigg. There are non- Kaustinen compositional approaches from Kella, Berghäll, guitarist Jani Kivelä and drummer Jussi Nikula, but there’s a strong input of the driven-bow twists, lurches and turns of Kaustinen’s new-wave, JPP-inspired, fiddles, harmonium and bass music.
The simplest track is the closer, Dansk
Fest, which, paradoxically, despite being by drummer Nikula is a delicate, hesitating, reflective melody with almost no percussion.
TSS will be in London at the beginning of November to play LIFEM festival; a recom- mended gig.
www.tsuumisoundsystem.com Andrew Cronshaw
THE BILLS Yes Please Red House RHR-CD-267
The Bills may be a folk band. Or they may have evolved beyond that, albeit without being transformed into any recognisable – at least by far-from-expert me – species of pop. Or maybe the model is those 1970s country- rock bands that were really neither country nor rock, just something or other that either you liked or you didn’t. Yes Please is con- founding in a way that, without the reputed- ly thrilling spectacle of live performance (for which the Bills are known), may not be fully accessible to the CD consumer loath to put some effort into the enterprise. Little here, one might say, is as one anticipates.
It is undeniable, however, that these five youngish guys from Canada’s west coast are top-flight musicians. They’re able to fashion complex and sophisticated arrangements in a format that owes something to genuine North Country traditions the Bills clearly know more than casually. One, not the least
Tsuumi Sound System
of them, is the French-Canadian. Beyond the borders, Django Reinhardt’s influence mani- fests, alongside iterations of post-bluegrass à la Sam Bush and David Grisman, not to men- tion the stray classical strain. All of this is surely commendable, and some of it – the gorgeous instrumental Love’s Melody, for example – is immediately engaging.
Except for the above-mentioned Rein- hardt, the material is original, composed by band members and mostly by guitarist Chris Frye and mandolinist Marc Atkinson. The melodies veer startlingly from cut to cut. One scarcely knows what to expect or make of them on initial exposure. As for the lyrics… hmmm. They’re pretty much inscrutable, con- structed around arcane geographical refer- ences (which you can look up) and – appar- ently – inside-the-band jokes (which you can’t). There is nothing here you will be singing in the shower.
That’s no unforgivable trespass, natural-
ly, but it does mean that there are parts of this – reactions will vary – that you will find more admirable than moving. The solution, I’ve found, is to keep listening. It seems to turn out well in the end.
www.thebills.ca Jerome Clark EMILIA AMPER
Trollfågeln – The Magic Bird BIS Records BIS-2013 SACD
Emilia Amper, already nyckelharpa World Champion in 2010, was named ‘Musician of the Year’ in Sweden’s annual Folk and World Music Gala awards in April, and as her CD unfolds it’s easy to see why.
Perhaps it’s the result of being able to lis- ten to themselves recorded, but lately there seems to be quite a trend among Nordic and Baltic folk-rooted players of bowed instru- ments toward exploring and relishing the range of sounds their instruments can make rather than just getting on with using them to knock out the tunes. Rather as on the first track of Estonian violinist-singer Maarja Nuut’s Soolo CD, Emilia opens her CD with a long-held single note, whose texture changes as different harmonics are excited by the bow and ring into the resonating strings, and her
Photo: Markus Schulte
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