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lecture on Pythagorean and medieval musical principles, followed by a recital from the duo; the audience was captivated and thoroughly intrigued and entertained. With this album, the scholarship is thoroughly evident in a 20- page booklet, containing translations of the lyrics (including a poem by Wales’ foremost medieval poet, Dafydd Ap Gwilym and an ancient bardic text called Arthur’s Talk With The Eagle). The subject throughout is birds, and the Arts Council-funded CD ties in with an ongoing tour on the same theme.
How does it sound? The album is trancey and meditative (think nyckelharpa or hurdy gurdy for the droning crwth) with only three long tracks (and a shorter video track) which draw the listener into a repetitive yet endless- ly shifting musical landscape, reminiscent of 20th Century minimalism in its effect, yet car- ried along with earnest narrative thrust from the confident, majestic vocals. It is impossible to know how similar this music is to the ancient performance style of its source mate- rial (isn’t that the case in any such tradition?); listened to as music on its own terms, the overall effect is of an assured and satisfyingly mesmeric ebb and flow of drones and mono- phonic pushings and pullings into harmony and dissonance. Not for the faint-hearted or small-minded, the music and its background deserves a whole university course to do it justice. Bob Evans’s brains are well worth picking, and this CD alone can only scratch the surface of his subject matter. Judged soni- cally and as performers, Bragod are a unique- ly fascinating and accomplished live duo, and are highly recommended.
bragod.wordpress.com Nathan Williams
PASCAL GEMME & MARIO LOISELLE
Violon du Québec Musique du Monde 3742895
GILLIAN BOUCHER Attuned Own Label Bar Code 6 7944400377 1
Two contrasting Canadian fiddle albums that are both worthy of note. The estimable Musique Du Monde label offers a Québécois duo that were recorded on a visit to France last year. Pascal (fiddle, foot tapping and a small smattering of turlutte mouth-music) and Mario (piano) offer the range of approaches and rhythms that this vibrant tra- dition contains, as well as a great variety. A favourite track would be Reel Discord with the fiddle tuned A-E-A-E allowing much touching of an open string. That and the ‘crooked’ extra bar gives the piece a delight- fully archaic sound.
Mario is also a fine fiddler and this seems
to allow him to be the ideal accompanist here, with adventurous but unobtrusive chording gently augmenting Pascal’s virtuosity.
The recording quality is superb and very sensitive to the fiddle. The piano is mixed in the background allowing every turn and nuance of the fiddle bowing to be well to the fore.
The other outstanding aspect of this pro- duction is the quality of the booklet notes in French and English, with the provenance, background and individual qualities of each track carefully noted.
www.budamusique.com
By contrast, Gillian chooses guitar (Seph Peters) and bodhran (Mark Currie) as accom- panists. She chooses a number of tunes from her native Cape Breton, but the album runs the gamut of traditional tunes and styles from Shetland, Irish, English and Asturian sources.
She sounds happy with this wide range of styles, rhythms and varied tempos. In fact the outstanding tracks reflect this with her
ability to sound relaxed even though she is playing the set that she calls Reeling and her poignant treatment of Neil Gow’s Lament For The Death of his Second Wife.
www.gillian-boucher.com Vic Smith SUZANNE VEGA
Tales From The Realm Of The Queen Of Pentacles Cooking Vinyl COOKCD600
Over a quarter of a century after the event it must be galling for Suzanne Vega that men- tion of her name still comes surgically attached to mentions of the hits Tom’s Diner and Luka. Will this change all that? No, of course not, although she does apply her own addendum with the jagged Song Of The Stoic, a gritty, resigned update of the Luka saga.
As you might expect from a performer of infinite style and polish, Vega’s first album in seven years is a beautifully produced affair (by Gerry Leonard) in which a series of some- times mysterious narratives blend with taut, sophisticated arrangements that cloak Vega’s whispery and vulnerable vocals (never noticed this before, but she reminds me of Laura Marling).
Yet, while populated with neat couplets, big ideas and relentless musicality, the actual- ity of the album doesn’t quite match the allure of that wonderful title. “How I hate the Queen of Pentacles sitting on her golden throne in her domestic tyranny,” she sings on Fool’s Complaint and you sit back and wait for some weird concept to unfold in front of you. If there is a theme it’s a pretty obtuse one, though that doesn’t mean some of the more left-field material like Jacob And The Angel and Portrait Of The Knight Of Wands doesn’t engage the imagination.
More accessible by half, Laying On Of
Hands has a great opening line “Mother Theresa understood the laying on of hands / what I often wonder is how she keeps from hearing love’s demands” and, amid material that appears to obsess with death or at least coming to terms with the end of life, the lighter touches of Horizon (There Is A Road) – trumpet solo and all – and Don’t Uncork What You Can’t Contain are very welcome.
It’s earnest, clever, deep and very possi- bly meaningful, but it beckons you to admire rather than love it.
www.suzannevega.com Colin Irwin
LUKE JACKSON Fumes And Faith Pipe PRCD024
Barely eighteen months ago, Canterbury- based teenager Luke impressed with his debut CD More Than Boys, after which he went on to conquer audiences at several of the big festivals with show-stopping, intense live performances. He was nominated in two categories of the 2013 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Now he’s come up with an even more impressive follow-up album, more bluesily intense, in keeping with the comparable peri- od of his life I guess, More Than Boys being a kind of chronicle of his growing-up, Fumes And Faith now taking the story up to date.
The initial pair of tracks couldn’t be more
contrasting: Sister is a full-on raw, stomping worksong-like holler, while Father And Son is a poignant and gentle reflection (comple- menting the tender reminiscence of Down To The Sea later on the CD), both songs illustrat- ing and encapsulating the advance in maturi- ty in Luke’s craft over the past year or so. The rest of the disc is no less compelling: Father’s Footsteps is arguably one of Luke’s finest
Suzanne Vega
vocal performances to date, while his under- age world-weariness thoroughly convinces on the incredibly bleak Buried Dreams, the rue- ful Out Of Time and the quite desperate final track Notebook. There’s shades of the tall- tale, tongue-in-cheek side of Richard Thomp- son on Charlie In The Big World, while Ghost At The Crossroads pays homage to blues lore with knowing references.
The listener’s close-up involvement in
Luke’s music is both enabled and accentuated by his reliance on sparse textures (the only other musician to feature on the disc is Andy ‘Wal’ Coughlan on bass). Most young per- formers of Luke’s age are still finding their own style, often by (consciously or otherwise) adopting the mannerisms and/or inflections of their heroes or mentors, but Luke has already acquired both an unmistakable voice and a strikingly individual vision, so has a tremendous head-start on the competition.
www.lukepauljackson.com David Kidman
KAROLINA CICHA & SPÓLKA feat BART PALYGA 9 Languages Wydzwiek, no cat no
MOSAIK Cale Szczescie Mosaik PL-J63
As I wrote in the piece in fR 367/368 about the Sounds Like Poland showcase in Warsaw, Karolina Cicha is a mightily impressive per- former, simultaneously playing accompani- ments on accordeon, keyboard and percus- sion yet not letting the technology and required concentration get in the way of direct, relaxedly perky communication of her wide-range, uninhibited singing.
She does it just like that on her album, joined, as live, principally and very creatively by multi-instrumentalist Bart Palyga on elec- tric cello, overtone whistle, jew’s-harp, man- dolin and duduk.
Not only that, but the traditional songs to which she brings strong dramatic personal- ity and quirky innovation are from nine of the linguistic groups in the cultural meeting- point of Poland’s eastern-border Podlaskie region: Polish in songs from Kurpie and Pod- laskie, two songs in Yiddish, one of them from her native Bialystok written by an exile at the beginning of WW2, a song in Ukraini-
Photo: George Holz
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