FOLK US JEANETTE LEECH’s last utterance
After 16 columns, it’s time for me to say farewell to Folkus. I’m sure it will come as no revelation that I’m one of those tedious people who like to over-think things and, since my previous column – where I questioned the overall standard of the releases I was receiving – I’ve had a chance to over-think things. Yes, I still believe in my words last issue: notwithstanding some outstanding individual records, I’m finding it difficult to compile a full column of recommended albums. I have very little wish to pick out ever-fewer pearls from swine, so that’s one reason for drawing a veil. However (and here comes the over-thinking) I’ve also wondered, in classic it’s- not-you-it’s-me style, whether it’s possible to be too close to a genre. I want so much for the sound to be moving forward, arching up in constant trailblazing, that I do give short shrift to merely enjoyable albums. Whatever the psychological or musical reasons, I’ve always believed that knowing when to end a good thing is important. Better to be Wee Tam And The Big Huge than Liquid Acrobat Regards The Air.
I hate long goodbyes, so let’s get on with the job in hand before I go all mushy on you. We start with one of my favourite artists of all time, but it’s someone who disappoints me with her
latest: JOSEPHINE FOSTER & THE VICTOR HERRERO BAND follow up 2010’s Anda Jaleo with another collection of Spanish folk songs, Perlas (Fire). Her voice is as joyfully obnoxious as ever and it sounds fairly upbeat (though I can’t speak for the lyrics, since my Spanish finds its outer limits at “Hola” and “Muchas gracias”). But, but, but: I miss her own songs! This is now the third album on the trot with no Foster words. Although my favourite track, ‘En Esta Larga Ausencia’, musically recalls her heavier work with The Supposed on All The Leaves Are Gone, it made me yearn for the time when she would write lyrics like “You think you are safe! You are wrong!” to go along with it.
Mysterious group TYNEHAM HOUSE offers a folkish elegy for the Dorset village of Tyneham on their debut self-titled album (Second Language). The
interesting back-story is that local residents were forced out of Tyneham in the late ’30s, as the British government requisitioned the area for martial purposes. Still, today, military trespass law forbids access to the formerly grand country manor. Over these 14 – (largely) instrumental and (very) meticulous – Tyneham House cry for the broken landscape and the dislocated population. It comes in an equally beautiful cardboard package, with bonus cassette and illustrated chapbook.
Feeling happy? With a title like Guitar & Voice (Constellation) you might think that ERIC CHENAUX shares your mood and is up for a
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simple sing-a-long. Think again. With a modern classical sensibility, taking in elements of folk, Chenaux is a distorted balladeer; on the vocal tracks he’s generally yearning and spent (“There is
no feather quite hard enough / to pillow this hardening life”), but the instrumentals are, if anything, even sadder. The anguished bowed guitar allows – demands, even – a projection of your own miseries.
You’ll not find any cheer either with THE DESOLATION SINGERS, who make music that reflects their name. The album The Blood Between Us (Hand/Eye) is high-quality experimental folk, with a real
nod to goth and even industrial music in places. I enjoyed this, if “enjoy” is the right word for something so bleak. With its mainly female vocals wailing and yearning, fans of the witchy clamour from Spires That In The Sunset Rise should pay attention to this.
There seemed a time, a couple of years back, when psychedelic Welsh ladies were about to take over the planet… it never quite happened. (For the record, I would quite like to live on that planet). One of
the most prominent, CATE LE BON, has been quiet for a while but now soars back with CYRK (Ovni), a gyroscope of prog, folk and pop. The title track is especially effective, and elsewhere – such as on ‘Greta’ – she spills her careering vocals over a strange brass-synth backing.
Another mainly instrumental project is harpist AUTUMN CURTIS-SUMMERS’ Autumn Soul Road (self-released). Her music pleasantly burbles along, doing little more than occasionally tapping you
politely on the shoulder. However, The Foo Fighters cover, ‘Skin And Bones’, is a grand exception to this: Curtis-Summers uses Dave Grohl’s lyrics and her own harp to challenge the ears, reminding me of cross-genre projects from the post-punk era, such as The Raincoats’ Odyshape. Minus points for trying the same trick with one of my most hated songs of all time, though (The Cranberries’ ‘Zombie’).
The music of ELFIN SADDLE has purpose behind it. The duo, of Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie, are environmental activists through their music. But don’t think that makes them
boringly worthy; their third album, Devastates (Constellation), achieves its point through form rather than didactic lyrics. Honda and McKenzie utilize found and recycled objects in their
The Magnetic North: lofty
conceptual songs, all recorded in an abandoned Québécoise chapel, and produce an album of challenging, yet still bucolic, drone-laden psychedelic folk. It’s an original take on the genre and I really, really like this record: it gets better every time I hear it, too.
Reviving the folktronica bubble is THE MAGNETIC NORTH, a supergroup comprising Erland & The Carnival and Hannah Peel. On Orkney: Symphony Of The Magnetic North (Full Time
Hobby) they try very hard to create a mythic soundscape reflecting the album’s inspiration: a young girl called Betty Corrigal who committed suicide in the 1770s. It’s all very lofty in its aim but I’m not convinced it works. The music is pleasant but – with that kind of melancholic subject matter – I doubt mere pleasure was the point.
It seems fitting that, at the close of Folkus, an act very dear to my heart should release two new albums. The ever-prolific STONE BREATH exhale the second and third in their recent clutch of projects.
The Night Birds Psalm (Hand/Eye) is – in comparison to the alienating The Aetheric Lamp, reviewed last issue – boldly accessible in a way they have never been before. Yet don’t think that this means a compromise of their unique grainy darkness; the words and music may be easier to grasp, but the mood is as unearthly as ever. ‘This Is What The Sparrow Sings’ is my favourite; it’s Stone Breath in relatively rare buoyant mood, mediating on the ageing process (believe me, that’s jovial subject matter for them) to an acid- folk nursery rhyme backing. Who Is Listening? (Hand/Eye) is Night Birds’ companion piece, and a shorter, plainer work. It includes re-recordings of some of their ’90s songs, astonishing pieces from Songs Of Moonlight And Rain and A Silver Thread To Weave The Seasons. These new versions remind me of why I fell in love with all that was weird in folk music in the first place. At its best, folk is soul-slicing stuff. Who is listening? I am. And I always will be.
www.firerecords.com www.secondlanguagemusic.com www.cstrecords.com www.darkhollerarts.com www.catelebon.com www.facebook.com/autumnsoulroad www.fulltimehobby.com
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