f64


It’s an album thick with nostalgia and emotion, the material weighted heavily towards the idealism that has always been at the heart of his work, extending to Les Bark- er’s re-imagining of The Dawning Of The Day, the brighter, breezier version of Tom Waits’ In The Neighbourhood, a jaunty treatment of Sidney Carter’s George Fox and a telling extract from Robb Johnson’s magnificent Great War song suite Gentle Men.


At 80, his voice has held up pretty well and, as Shirley Collins and Peggy Seeger are proving, 80 is the new 21, and he sounds like there are plenty more choruses left in the old dog yet.


www.roybailey.net Colin Irwin SURPLUZ


“Dat Ik Zingen Moet!” Appel Rekords APR1372


Surpluz started out as a quartet with bagpipes/ saxophone, hurdy gurdy/clarinet, diatonic accordeon and guitar and started to work in Flanders as a dance band but they also want- ed to be known for their singing and their second album, Laat Ons Drinken! (or ‘Let’s have a drink!’) featured many lusty vocals. It looks like they really wanted to develop this side for they added two excellent singers to their line-up; the fine tenor voice of Jonas Cole who also sings with the highly-rated Brussels Vocal Project, and a very fine female singer, Hanneke Oosterlijnck. They then set out to research and find some neglected, interesting traditional songs from their own area. Clearly a lot of work has gone into arranging the accompaniments and har- monies of what you hear on this album and the result is some fresh-sounding, engaging performances which give them a distinctive sound amongst the fairly crowded and tal- ented folk roots scene in Belgium.


In October the new augmented line-up played at the English Folk Expo and at Cecil Sharp House, so other British appearances may follow from such showcases.


www.denappel.be Vic Smith ANDY WHITE


Studio Albums 1986-2016 Floating World FW042


Imaginary Lovers ALTCD16


Longevity in singer-songwriters is impressive. Like Pete Morton, Andy White has ploughed a lonely furrow through many years when one man and his guitar and a notebook of self- written songs were deemed the nadir of fash- ion and barely got a look-in from any area of the media. But here he is, not just with a very acceptable new album of songs of high quali- ty, but a fancy box set containing his entire studio recording career. Which amounts to twelve albums, plus an entertaining book depicting chapter and verse on their making, lots of those doodly diagrams that have invariably decorated them and some self-dep- recating stories of his life and work as a bohemian troubadour, plenty of scrimping and starving on the way. Talking about one of his most contentious early hits, The Soldier’s Sash, he writes “We were listening to John Lennon and Teenage Kicks, Velvet Under- ground and Bob Dylan… Soldier’s Sash mixes all this absurdity into a self-declared national anthem. Powerless in the face of violence, ridiculousness is sometimes an answer…”


Growing up in Belfast during The Trou- bles, his music was always breathlessly edgy and somehow heroic. The urgency of Reli- gious Persuasion, with the scattergun lyrics


that have effectively been his calling card ever since, is still electrifying, getting its first national airplay courtesy of Alan ‘Fluff’ Free- man. A revved-up poet, he might even be called a rapper these days with the attitude of punk but an instinct for a killer chorus and an oddball couplet to sweeten the torrent of words. “I didn’t care who’d listen to these songs, I simply had to write them,” he says. That’s how it still all sounds, too, and there surely is no more inspirational motivation for a man of words.


He’s been through several metamor- phoses along the way, of course. Record deals galore which often promised plenty but never won him the international fame many of us anticipated; there were self-contained independent recordings; there was rock- ’n’roll; full-blooded electric line-ups; solo acoustic sessions; folk songs; collaborations (notably with Liam O Maonlai and Tim Finn); recordings in studios all over the world; and songs about John Lennon, James Joyce (James Joyce’s Grave is probably my favourite White song) and Samuel Beckett and stories of war and peace and love and hate and reli- gion and hope and rebellion and all manner of random observations in between.


Alongside the volcanic early material, the


new album Imaginary Lovers (which is also included in the box set) sounds almost light and uncomplicated. A feel-good collection, if you like, an enjoyable and uncomplicated depiction of a man at ease with his music and, perhaps more importantly, with himself.


www.andywhite.com Colin Irwin


LORCÁN MAC MATHÚNA Visionaries Lorcán Mac Mathúna LMM1916


Released with funding from the Irish Arts Council, this album accompanies 1916 – Visionaries And Their Words, a commissioned show of music, archive visuals, and spoken word commemorating the centenary of the Easter Rising.


Created by singer Lorcán Mac Mathúna, with singer Íde Nic Mhathúna, accodeonist Martin Tourish, fiddle and guitar player Daire Bracken and piper, fluter and saxophonist Eamonn Galldubh, the songs possess a pow- erful immediacy due to their being crafted directly from the words and music of four of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic.


There’s a remarkable empathy evident in the musical settings of the poetry. Voices and fiddles rise and soar skywards in Joseph Plun- kett’s The Cloud. James Connolly’s words are invested with a chorus worthy of prime-era Andy Irvine or Dick Gaughan and will surely find its way into the repertoire of many singers. Patrick Pearse’s Fornocht Do Chonac Thú showcases Mac Mathúna’s remarkable sean nós singing talent, whilst Éamonn Cean-


Andy White


nt – co-founder, in 1900 of Cumann na bPíobairí (The Pipers Club), is represented by An Ceol An Phiobaire / Cnocan An Tempal / The Gold Ring.


The traditional Óró Sé Do Bheatha


‘Bhaile – among the best-known of Irish Gael- ic songs – features an effective children’s cho- rus. Bean Sléibhe Ag Caoineadh A Mic (A Woman Of The Mountain Keens Her Son) is powerfully sung by Íde Nic Mhathúna.


Whilst the Visionaries in the title refers to the proclamation signatories, it’s a word that applies equally well to Lorcán Mac Math- úna, whose remarkable fluency in both tradi- tional and contemporary and experimental musical forms enables him to present histori- cal material such as this in ways that are both startlingly original and entirely apt.


1916 – Visionaries In Their Words will be touring five venues in Ireland around Easter.


1916visionaries.ie Stephen Hunt


MANUEL LUNA Viajes Sonoros Trenti TFCD-143


Manuel Luna has been a leading figure, as musician, field recordist and broadcaster, in the championing of the rural musics of Spain over the last four or more decades, and over that time has made a string of albums but this is the most splendid I’ve heard.


It’s a set of memorable songs drawn largely from his long musical history. Tradition al ones from his native Cantabria in the north, Castilla in the centre, down to Murcia, his home in the south. And, fitting perfectly alongside them, his own composi- tions including No Me Mandes Más Jamones, the flamenco-style En Los Mares Que Nací and perhaps his best-known song, Los Gallos De Londres.


His distinctive, strongly-projected rough husky voice leads a line-up including his band La Cuadrilla Maquilera on laúd, octavilla, requinto, bass, accordeon, pandereta and other percussion, group vocals, and his own five-course, nine-stringed guitar and iconic wooden pestle and mortar, plus guests on fla- menco vocal, violin, gaita, and more.


It’s a sound that, as Luna has always done, captures the essence of musics that, while archetypally Spanish and instantly recognisable as such by their modes and rhythms, aren’t sufficiently represented or heard abroad, and celebrates it with the raw energy of the communal music-making from which the traditional songs come.


sltrenti@gmail.com Andrew Cronshaw


HOME SERVICE New Ground Dotted Line DLCD002


It’s big, boisterous, brawling and of course booms across the study. This is a return that’s very welcome. Faces change but intentions remain. When speaking to Graeme Taylor he acknowledged that the departure of John Tams had given pause for thought, but only for the briefest of moments. After all bands don’t come more committed than these lads and no one wanted to throw in the towel. Later developments – sadly illness, then emi- gration – changed two more positions but nothing could stop the momentum and here’s the proof.


Kellingley opens the account in strident, bracing form as John Kirkpatrick gives every- thing with a passionate hymn to the coal industry which chases realism by acknowledg- ing its environmental impact. Shallow thinkers of my acquaintance raised eyebrows when JK was announced as part of Home Ser-


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