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an about a Cossack, young girls’ songs in Lithuanian and Belarussian about unhappi- ness in marriage or its threat, one in Russian eulogising the Russian landscape, two in Tar- tar about young lovers and a snowdrop/life analogy, one in Romani about freedom, love and not getting up early, and ending with Psalm 23 in Esperanto, the language created by Podlaskie-born Ludwik Zamenhof.
These are total performances, full of life and wildness in very original music with wide- ly influenced, no-boundaries approaches. The word about her is likely to spread fast.
www.karolinacicha.eu
The excellent Palyga also plays in the band Mosaik, which combines Polish tradi- tional, Middle Eastern and early-music and instrumentation in spacious, grainy-textured interpretations of traditional songs that are far from the more classically-restrained end of early music. Medieval fiddler Jolanta Kos- sakowska sings in the wild, gutsy Polish tradi- tional style, with accompaniments on oud, hammered dulcimer, duduk, mandola, recorder, reed pipes and percussion plus Paly- ga’s acoustic bass and jew’s-harp. A nice touch is the change in acoustic of the closing track, recorded outdoors, presumably outside the mountain hut where the rest of the album was recorded.
www.mosaik.pl Andrew Cronshaw
HARVEY ANDREWS Encore HASKACD005
It would have been difficult to believe 50 years ago that some of the offspring from the new folk music phenomenon would still be impacting and adding to the pool of new songs to be shared here in the 21st Century. Harvey Andrews is one such artist and his col- lection of fourteen songs on his new CD Encore is living testament to just that.
With new recordings of older songs and new material too, Harvey shares his percep- tions on the more interesting side of humani- ty, exploring the laughter, tears, anger, fun and the fears it takes to swerve our way through modern life.
As a writer he has always had the ability to find the right phrase at the right time. He can write the kind of song that instantly makes the singer think “wish I’d said that!” The job of songwriting changes as language does and the anger that writers wore as a badge in the 1960s has to show itself in a more measured and more discrete way; sug- gestion has taken the place of accusation and angry cries have subsided into the slightly more measured approach . Harvey Andrews is a writer who has always rolled with those changes and as a consequence kept his writ- ing fresh and relevant. Are there many who have been so consistently good over such a long period of time?
With a balanced mix of humour and seri- ous songs, additionally peppered with the utterly memorable tracks such as Whiskey Jack or The Innocent, this album provides the diehard, long-lasting Andrews fans with exactly what they would expect from the man whilst sending enough threads out there to haul in a whole new gamut of fans too.
As the music and followers move on down the road a pace to the next 50 years and the names of Dylan, Paxton, Donovan and Thompson are bandied about as the chief source of songs and tunes the name Harvey Andrews shall be amongst them. Encore, is proof of that, and all in his 70th year of life too.
www.harveyandrews.com Owen Lewis
Curtis Eller’s American Circus
CURTIS ELLER’S AMERICAN CIRCUS
How To Make It In Hollywood American Circus AC-1894
From the Jamie B Wolcott cover of a roller- skating boxer in front of a bevy of chorus girls in a circus tent, you know you’re in for Curtis Eller’s unique take on Americana – a million miles away from lazy cliches and down-home flummery – that takes in two-bit prizefighters, Hollywood has-beens, lapsed gospel singers and forgotten pop stars as its heroes, creating an alternative history just as authentic as the accepted one. Take If You’re Looking For A Loser: the scene is set with Robert E Lee surrendering to “that drunken Union bastard”, all plunking banjo, but sud- denly it’s “cut to 1965” and we’re with Sonny Liston laid low on the canvas by a taunting Cassius Clay – and this is a love song, for heav- en’s sake…
If you’ve seen Eller live (the memory of him standing on one leg on a chair at 2am in a Brighton cinema, getting the audience to impersonate pigeons, will linger long), it’s easy to let the intensity of his performance hide his way with words, but the man is a master. Sacco and Vanzetti, Henry Kissinger, Roosevelt, J Edgar Hoover and Upton Sinclair all make vignette appearances in songs that hint at “bad ink in the money… a nation grown dark at the core”, where fundamen- talism and broken promises threaten. This Is The Heart That Forgave Richard Nixon spells it out, but the scariest is Moses In The Bul- rushes, where even Eller’s trademark yodel has turned desperate.
There is hope, though; Elvis has to get in the act, and the white-boy Goldwax soul of Three More Minutes With Elvis (with great organ and piano from Louis Landry, whose drums and percussion give a 1960s garage- band snap to the arrangements) calls for “one more song that rings true”; 1929 is full of delicious schadenfreude on the verge of the Depression; a Busby Berkeley Funeral would do for all of us, with “a rainbow shin- ing down on me in sweet black and white”; and the solo closer, Thunder and Beehives, is a lovely ode to the continuum of the folk- song process.
The sound is immediate and vital, the songs are killers. What more do you need?
www.CurtisEller.com Ian Kearey
MAFIASKO TAXI Ljudi Ptice/Human Birds Via Lactea VLR-010
Mafiasko Taxi formed in 2011, the poster- band of the European Union ‘Feria de Fron- teras’ initiative, happily embracing empa- thetic ideas, musicians and traditions from Belgium, Bosnia, France, Serbia and pretty much everywhere in between. The intention of the project was to dismantle or ignore all “personal, cultural, political, social, lingual, imaginary and even sexual” borders. And this is the recorded result of such ambition, a noisy, headlong clash of pounding Balkan brass, juddering bass lines, sophisticated jazz arrangements and respectfully-played Cen- tral European folk music.
Brash opener Ušti Ušti Baba sees block- busting Bond themes flow logically into a Balkan big-band workout, replete with muggy but huge production, innovative per- cussion and typically competitive soloing. The whole panoply of borderless musical landscapes and ideas is revealed, but briefly and barely.
Otherwise, it’s a race through styles, tra- ditions and times, in intriguing games of spot-the-influence or motif: tarantella, rumba, jazz certainly, flamenco possibly, and an overt and constant homage to sevdah. A passionate project, therefore. But it’s also a thoughtful and surprising album, dominat- ed by the delicate but swooning vocals of Jelena Milušic, often so sweet and serenad- ing that the accompanying music seems brit- tle, corrupt, raw, even grungey, as it follows her into the light.
However far west the band reach, though, this remains, inescapably, an album about the music and musicians of Central Europe and the Balkans, yearning across decades of emigration and war. The album was recorded in Mostar, Bosnia. And it’s the unmistakable melodic melancholy of Mostar that we can hear more than anything else, tragedy transformed into unearthing and rebirth, including influence and contributions from Mostar Sevdah Reunion accordeon play- er Mustafa Šantic, who makes Ciganka Je Malena feel like a ghostly flit through the city’s backstreets.
Though generally tender, Mostar’s own Milušic does sometimes emote with almost gothic relish and unhinged laughter. Her semi-rap through Vatra, duelling with intensely violent percussion by Orhan Maslo,
Photo: Alex Maness
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