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TOM PACHECO Boomtown Grammofon GRAM 1489


Ever the quintessential ‘great lost American songwriter’, Tom has over the past four decades persistently followed his muse and produced more than twenty albums of thought-provoking, original songs containing succinct observations on our lives, and my last encounter with Tom, his excellent 2008 album Railroad Rainbows And Talkin’ Blues (Bare Bones VI), had indicated no drying-up of inspiration. Since then, however, there’s been a resounding silence, with no UK touring and no new product coming my way (even fanzine The Outsider seems to have gone to ground), so I was starting to get mighty worried.


But the arrival, totally out of the blue, of this brand new studio album has reassured me that all’s well with Tom. Here he treats us to thirteen of his most recent compositions, which pursue an approved course through American history following the Woodstock generation (now passing on) through to the social media fanatics (YouTube), delivering through the twin perspectives of percipient hindsight and justified nostalgia (as on Boomtown itself and the aromatic Greenwich Village reminiscence MacDougal Street Sum- mer 1966) ever-pertinent (and sometimes decidedly laconic) commentaries on the ‘plus ça change’ state of the world. As is Tom’s method, these alternate with songs of heart- rendingly tender longing and telling intro- spection like One More Time, The Healing and the disc finale One More Night Till Touch- down (inevitably, it’s the latter category that will have the greater shelf-life), as well as angry songs about the repression of key heroes (here Julian Assange) and songs telling the tales of little-known figures like DB Cooper (I bet youhave to look him up,too!). OK, just maybe one or two of the new songs here spawn rather too obvious sentiments, while What Would Woody Think? (for all that it typifies Tom’s perennial theme of celebrating the maverick in whom humani- ty’s redemption lies) invokes a distinct sense of ‘we’ve been there before’.


But Tom’s writing still hasn’t lost its radi- cal edge, and his rich, care-worn ‘eternal troubadour’ voice has lost none of its passion and commitment, while the deployment of full-band settings (with trusty collaborators Kopsland, Løland, Lowland and Neo, record- ed in Norway) doesn’t compromise the integrity, and sheer staying power, of Tom’s personal vision.


www.tompacheco.com David Kidman THE FOXGLOVE TRIO


These Gathered Branches Own label FXGCD02


Upon initial encounter, the lyrical and melod- ic content of individual pieces on this maiden album by the Home Counties trio may grab less attention than, say, the unorthodox time signature that propels The Jolly Pinder Of Wakefield or the bowed string counterpoint towards the close of Colli Llanwddyn. As well as another Welsh language opus – Lliw Gwyn Rhossyn Yr Haf – a vignette of Men Of Harlech rears up in The Three Huntsmen, and Selar Hill hinges on a poem by the late Gwynedd bard Robert Williams Parry.


While the principal emphasis is upon orchestrating both material from time immemorial and contemporary items by such as The Frames and Uiscedwr, the Trio prove competent composers, albeit relying chiefly upon traditional texts such as The Owslebury Lads, with its chorus lifted from a song trace- able to 19th Century Hampshire, but with verses from the pen of guitarist and cellist Cathy Mason.


Musical precision and spontaneity co- exist comfortably as she and Patrick Dean (cello, melodeon and percussion) provide a proficient and subtly imaginative instrumen- tal framework and often breathtaking vocal harmonies for Ffion Mair’s assured soprano (somewhere between Maddy Prior and – most likely unconsciously – Grace Slick).


Tellingly, These Gathered Branches was on instant replay throughout a long car jour- ney recently – though nearer my destination, I began skipping certain of its twelve tracks to focus on the downbeat Farewell To Fiunary finale and, especially, a cappella The Pit Boy, a broadside opus written in the wake of a Yorkshire colliery catastrophe in 1851. For days, it seemed I couldn’t let a waking hour go by without another shot of it. Neverthe- less, The Pit Boy is but one of many highlights of a thoroughly diverting collection that should do brisk business on the merchandis- ing stall straight after any given performance on the Trio’s work schedule – which deserves to become busier.


www.thefoxglovetrio.co.uk Alan Clayson


RYAN BOLDT Broadside Ballads Dahl Street Records


This first solo release from the frontman of Canadian band The Deep Dark Woods is an unassumingly marvel- lous record. It was Boldt who produced last year’s wonder- ful debut by Kacy & Clayton and both feature here – the latter adding guitar, banjo,


keyboards and steel to Boldt’s own guitar, vocals, bass and drums.


Made up of just nine traditional songs, the inclusions of Love Is Pleasin’, Just As The Tide Was Flowing, Ramble Away, Poor Mur- dered Woman (on this issue’s fRoots 53)and Sally My Dear suggest that Boldt has been exploring the recorded works of Shirley Collins with some enthusiasm. If that’s indeed the case then it’s safe to assume that it’s Collins’ unaffected honesty as a singer that appeals most to him, as he delivers these songs in a voice devoid of folksy artifice or pretence of any kind.


Ryan Boldt


There’s nothing overly showy about his instrumental accompaniments either, yet he makes each song his own – a good case in point being The Auld Triangle. Back in circulation via the Clancys-alike version in Inside Llewyn Davis (by Messrs Mumford, Thile and Timber- lake) it becomes a different song in Boldt’s relaxed fingerpicking arrangement. Welcome Table is a great old freedom spiritual from the Civil Rights movement and Leaning On The Everlasting Arms an almost-forgotten favourite of my rural Methodist childhood (which I’ve subsequently re-learned).


I’ve never been to Saskatoon,


Saskatchewan, but somehow Ryan Boldt and his Broadside Ballads carry me back to where I come from. I’ll be playing this and revisiting often. He’s in the UK in April.


www.ryanboldt.bandcamp.com Stephen Hunt


JAUME COMPTE NAFAS ENSEMBLE Tariq ARC Music Productions EUCD2545


So, here’s another album aiming to draw com- parisons between Iberian, Arabic and other Mediterranean music using fusion. Ho hum. But wait! In Tariq, multi-instrumentalist Jaume Compte and the Nafas Ensemble have made an album that doesn’t abide by the same overused template of flamenco plus oud and darbuka. Instead, they use the various genres from around the Mediterranean as a starting point to make a style that is their own, and end up with some beautiful art music.


The album’s sound is mostly based


around Western strings, which take in the Arabic, Spanish and Greek influences together with a Western classical sensibility and put out an ethereal and effortless blend of it all. These strings provide the base upon which different flavours are variously added – accordeon, Ira- nian kamancheh fiddle, Spanish and Catalan vocals, glimpses of Indian music and breezes of Balkan – while Jaume Compte adds guitars, oud and bouzouki as well as all manner of percussion and ambient sound effects. These interchanging layers give each piece its own identity and texture, from luscious sound- scapes and bustling city music to a solo cello lament; it all creates the feeling of a story flowing through the entire album.


It’s so refreshing to hear an album that approaches the Iberio-Arab fusion with sensi- tivity, class and originality. At a time when this sort of fusion seems to be very much in fashion, it is for these very reasons that Tariq and the Jaume Compte Nafas Ensemble stand out from the crowd.


www.arcmusic.co.uk Jim Hickson


VARIOUS ARTISTS Balkan Clarinet Summit Piranha CD-PIR2857


Opener, Nostalgia, is a harsh and complex memory, Stavros Pazarentsis on klarino serv- ing up murk, then emptiness, through a creepy absence of customary over-arranging. And so the album continues, a subtle unity between six virtuosi which quietly accentuates the huge ambition of the project. This is not wedding music, except perhaps for the most regrettable and melancholy of matches. It’s a chamber of clarinets, six masters of the instru- ment drawn from the supposedly differing national traditions of south eastern and cen- tral Europe – where the clarinet is dominant and is shown here to have almost unlimited capabilities, in gripping simulations of brass, strings and even shudders of industrial noise. The whole is a remarkable understanding between powerful players of perhaps contra- dictory backgrounds and techniques.


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