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with a high, passionate voice, very much at odds with your typical griot growl. Goose is a skilled and inventive guitarist, clearly influ- enced by Ry Cooder and Ali Farka Touré (and probably Justin Adams for that matter) but with a distinctively light sound all the same. They’re backed by a tight band on an album of all original material and many moods (bluesy, brassy, folky, soulful…).

Given that the whole thing works so

well, it’s hard to pick out individual tracks, but chugging, blues-rocking stage-favourite Lolambe and the slow and sultry We Walk In The Sahara are particular current favourites, the latter showing off Touré’s honeyed wail of a voice to best effect. Goose always seems to have numerous interesting projects on the go, but The West African Blues Project is the one bearing the finest fruits so far.

www.ramongoose.com/ Jamie Renton Moore, Moss & Rutter

MOORE, MOSS & RUTTER MMR 11 Rootbeat RBRCD26

Tom Moore, Archie Churchill- Moss and Jack Rutter have plenty going for them. Three outstanding musicians from Norfolk, Somerset and York- shire, they bring plenty of verve, dexterity and enthusi- asm to exceptional gifts on fiddle, melodeon and guitar

respectively. Clearly they’ve made much head- way since winning the BBC Young Folk Award in 2011 – and indeed since the debut album that followed – and with this well-rounded second album they look ready to bring their noble instruments to the top table.

When that table already has the likes of Lau, Spiro and Leveret firmly ensconced, they may have to squeeze on the end, but there’s a unity and cohesion about them that should advance them a long way and their clearly focused passion for traditional music is very seductive. More even than that, this produc- tion (Andy Bell) displays a real respect, under- standing and empathy with the roots of their music. They don’t rush, they don’t do fraught, overwrought or frantic; they don’t grand- stand and they don’t do tricks; they play with utter sincerity, sensitivity and a refreshingly natural flair. It places them into the very heart of the new British folk scene and while the lack of sharp edges and clobbering rhythms might scupper any possibility of mainstream interest, that’s clearly not some- thing on their agenda.

It was apparently recorded in Sheffield (where else?) in less than a week but the real graft had been ploughed into the four years of touring previously and this album is graced with some really beautiful playing and gor- geous tunes. Moore’s sculpted violin on the Québécois tune Valse-Sainte is utterly sub- lime, while the Moss tune Catch The Sun has a gently soothing impact nurtured beguilingly along by the three-piece at their most charm- ingly mellow before it neatly segues into a song John Tams wrote for Warhorse, The Year Turns Round Again. This ease of passage is an enduringly pleasing feature of the album.

If there is a weakness it’s in the vocal tracks that aren’t quite so convincing. They don’t carry the same sort of unblinking confi- dence, either in arrangement or delivery. Which is a shame because they’ve gone out of their way to find interesting material like the American song Wait For The Waggon and The Reed Cutter’s Daughter, a wonderful song with the potential to be a showstopper.

Hear a track on this issue’s fRoots 55

compilation. www.mooremossrutter.co.uk

Colin Irwin

THOMAS MAPFUMO Lion Songs Lion Songs LS001

Buy one, buy both: here’s an essential com- panion to Banning Eyre’s fact-packed book of the same name. Each adds meaning to the other, and the enormous contribution made by Mapfumo stands clear and historic. What a man! What a stoned groaner! He is the owner of the most mysteriously compelling voice in popular music, a direct descendant of the shamanistic murmurings of Shona wise men. No wonder he caught the ear. He called to arms, he raised morale, he nailed the moment. Black Zimbabweans listened and took him to heart. He took the sacred melodies of the traditional mbira and trans- posed them to guitar lines. He laid down a whole new rhythmic structure, an expressway to the heart, and used the spiritual resonance – and a talent for telling metaphor – to add power to his denunciations of the stupidity and unfairness of Rhodesian and then Zim- babwean politics. Meanwhile, his rhythms were irresistible, just outrageously catchy. You can hear it all here, a great selection of both rare and well-known songs. All sorts of different echoes are conjured up – rock, reg- gae, funk – but what really astonishes is how true he has remained to his original style. Mapfumo always sounds like Mapfumo.

One potent device on this anthology, which covers the Zimbabwean legend’s whole 40-year career from Hallelujah Chicken Run Band to his current political exile in the USA, is to intersperse the songs with spoken excerpts from interviews. Mapfumo talking is an enthralling and poetic voice. His state- ments about Mugabe and Ian Smith, for example, carry depth. But after you’ve played the album a few times they seem to get in the way. It’s a bit like sound effects in musical recordings – they operate at a different level of brain, and the jump from one to the other can’t help but be a grinding of gears. A shame, but there you are.

www.thomas-mapfumo.com Rick Sanders

MODOU TOURÉ & RAMON GOOSE

The West African Blues Project ARC music LC05111

A long time coming but well worth the wait, Anglo-Argentinean blues guitar wiz Ramon Goose and extraordinary Senegalese vocalist Modou Touré have been working together on and off for a few years now and here offer up a fresh take on the (let’s face it) increas- ingly stale West African/desert blues genre. Touré (whose father was a member of Sene- galese pop titans Touré Kunda) is blessed

ÁLYTH Homelands ANE Records CD103

It’s been a while since Ályth McCormack’s last album, since when she’s been touring the world with The Chieftains as well as moving her home to another country. Born and brought up in the Isle of Lewis, with strong ties there, and – over the last few years – developing the same in her new home in the countryside of Ireland’s County Wexford, she’s returned to her musical roots with famil- iar songs, while posing the question, in this age of constant movement and travel, “what/where is home?”

Her beautiful singing grabs the attention from the start: a quiet but musically insistent voice, beautiful enunciation, loads of under- stated emotion, if perhaps a little more vibra- to than on her last, more contemporary, album. Her vocals are never less than charis- matic: here’s someone who really could stand up and sing unaccompanied traditional songs in English or Gaelic and captivate a large audience that understands neither. It’s a rare talent – shades of the late Ishbel MacAskill, maybe, although her voice is quite different. If you could only bottle it...

Most of the tracks are traditional or at the very least familiar: The Lamb On The Greenhills, Raglan Road, even Carrickfergus, while the acoustic arrangements have a light touch, courtesy of Brian MacAlpine, Noel Eccles and others. The three songs in Gaelic include Buachaill Ón Éirne (A Boy From Erne) – the tune was hijacked for the well known Come By The Hills – and A Mhàiri Bhòidheach (Beautiful Mary) which will also probably chime with other non-speakers like this scribe.

Homelands isn’t an ‘in-your-face’

album – it’s almost low key – but the delight increases with each spin. It’s a real grower, and well worth your attention, ladies and gentlemen.

www.alyth.net Bob Walton POKEY LAFARGE

Something in the Water Rounder Records 7236919

I reviewed an earlier Pokey LaFarge CD in these page four years ago, when I described his persona on disc as “a sweet, slightly befuddled guy, happily chasing girls and innocent fun in a world as cheery as that of a PG Wodehouse novel”.

It’s hard to imaging that LaFarge singing about abusive partners, apocalyptic earth- quakes or suicides leaping from the Mississippi River Bridge – but all three subjects raise their