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Shirley Collins, as seen in her video for Death And The Lady –
youtu.be/EKTWxI_DJOE
SHIRLEY COLLINS Lodestar Domino
Well, that’s album of the year sorted then.
The thing is, where do
you draw the line between emotional goodwill and genuine quality? Inevitably, reaction to Shirley Collins’ first album for 35 years by the proba-
bly the greatest-loved single figure in British folk music is destined to be posi- tively warmed by knowledge of her cele- brated back story since the earliest days of the revival and the dysphonia which silenced her for so long. With her game- changing albums , her books, awards, lec- tures, honours, celebrity testimonials and a documentary film in the works, she has long been a veritable national treasure… and then some.
But even taking all that into account, this is… impossibly wonderful. Her voice is deeper, a little cracked in places maybe – no bad thing when you’re singing traditional songs of death, murder and betrayal – but she palpably remains the Shirley who’d inhabit any song with such gentle ease. When she sings Death & The Lady, it is spine-tin- gling stuff; Shirley at 80 exhibiting the same lived-in, stripped-down rawness Johnny Cash struck singing Hurt.
So much credit, though, must go to
producer/musical director Ian Kearey, who refuses to entertain any notion of this becom- ing mere nostalgia-fest with a series of clever and telling accompaniments. There’s a startling opening statement of intent during all manner of musical twists and turns as Awake Awake develops into something of a mini folk opera in its own right, morphing from hymn to May Day celebration. Kearey’s restrained slide guitar on Death & The Lady offers the perfect disquieting setting of doom and foreboding for Shirley to deliver her tale of an encounter with the Grim Reaper. Not dissimilarly, the ghastly saga of Cruel Lincoln (hear it on this issue’s fRoots 61) unfolds, with gripping simplicity, over the sound of innocent birdsong and gentle acoustic guitar, and Pretty Polly is accorded telling bouncy percussion. Even more haunt- ingly, vocal frailty melds potently into strings on The Silver Swan. She still knows how to tell a story, that’s for sure.
It’s not all dark and tragic – Old Johnny
Buckle is jauntily fiddle-driven; we get a spir- ited blast of Cajun at the end of The Rich Irish Lady and, she even tackles – rather charming- ly – the French language song Sur Le Borde De L’eau by Louisiana cult hero Blind Uncle Gaspard.
So… emotional? Yes. Nostalgic? No. Excellent? Definitely.
www.shirleycollins.co.uk Colin Irwin
RUTH THEODORE Cactacus Aveline AVREC001
So, with a billion-and-one singer-songwriters in the world, both female and other varieties, what makes Ruth Theodore a cut above? Well, everything really. The magnificent The Carcass & The Pride strongly recalls Anaïs Mitchell and it’s easy
to make parallels with Mitchell and AniD- iFranco given that her Californian producer Todd Sickafoose has worked extensively with both; but ultimately she’s just different. And, on this third album – which he produced with lofty confidence and wholehearted belief – she makes the big leap from someone agree- ably left-field and eccentric into a rounded artist, with an accumulation of method accompanying the madness.
Yes, the album is awash with endearingly unintelligible lyrics, random whoops and unconventional arrangements and instru- mentation, but Sickafoose has shaped it into a relative coherence perfectly exemplified by the outrageously infectious You Can’t Help Who You Love. The songs aren’t quite as will- fully obtuse, either, this time round… there are still liberal reference to water and the solar system with Man Of The Land (you heard it on fRoots 60) sounding like a very big and likeably irreverent song indeed, re-
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