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JOHN KIRKPATRICK Coat-Tails Flying Feldg’ling FLED 3104


The accompanying press release points out that this is his eleventh album for Fledg’ling. Eleventh! Then there were all the previous ones on Topic, Trailer, Free Reed and other labels. Do we really need another John K album? You bet we do!


After a number of ‘themed albums’,


John returns to a broader programme of songs and tunes from a number of sources, including his own compositions. The out- standing element of this particular album is the sheer power and quality of his singing as he addresses a catholic choice of songs; everything from Blue Moon through some wonderful takes on traditional songs; some beauties to savour such as The Green Mossy Banks Of The Lee, The Hi Ho Hare and Come All You Jolly Ploughboys as well as his own songs with the ultimate feel-good song, The Middle Of The World being one of the stand-out tracks. The infectious pleasure that this engenders tells us that John is back to enjoying life after a sad period. As always his booklet notes are a pleasure to read with their combination of erudition and self-dep- recating humour.


There are a couple of instrumental tracks, one combining two tunes he’s written for morris sides which he’s associated with, and a very full-sounding arrangement of a military march, On The Quarter Deck.


However enjoyable this and all his previ- ous albums are, it must be pointed out that the recorded John cannot compare with the sheer exhilaration and magic of seeing the man Shirley Collins has called “English music’s mighty heart of oak” perform live. There are some of us who try to build regular attendance at his gigs into our well-being programmes.


www.fledglingrecords.co.uk Vic Smith THIS IS THE KIT


Moonshine Freeze Rough Trade RTRADCD870


There’s a playful and childish naïveté to Kate Stables’ songs – wide-eyed, guileless, inquisitive. She takes great glee in the sim- ple sounds of words, relishing the repeti- tions and gratifying alliterations, wrapping them round her tongue and sounding them out. The songs on Moonshine Freeze nostal- gically echo children’s games and chants, the title track coming from a playground clapping song. Yet there are sinister and dis- orderly whispers at play: superstitions, secrets, folklore and incantations. They tell stories and introduce characters as if through a rapid projection of images, flick- ering and haphazard. Listening to this album is like trying to determine an outline of a face you know intimately well, made obscure by darkness.


Yet Kate’s confiding vocals are constant and consoling, and no measure of menace in the band arrangements or lyrics can dampen the familiar steadiness of her voice murmur- ing in your ear. She coos “Probability-wise one of us has to die/But by the same reckon- ing, it will be fine” over teetering electric gui- tar and shuffling percussion. It’s her close voice and its constant, cool indifference, and the recurring intimacy of her steady banjo riffs that provide such a compelling contrast to the vast and spacious rhythms of her band and John Parish’s stark production.


All Written Out In Numbers pieces together shards of the traditional counting song Green Grow The Rushes, seizing on simi- lar themes of astronomy and numerology, adding its own cryptic strand of existential- ism. In Easy On The Thieves she considers per-


sonal accountability, and the responsibility of wrongdoers. “People want blood” she sings, “and blood is what they’ve got”. These songs see symmetry in our chaos, and innocence in our flaws, compacting the world into numeri- cal and childlike simplicity.


thisisthekit.co.uk Kitty Macfarlane


SAM KELLY & THE LOST BOYS Pretty Peggy Navigator 102


You have to admire the way Sam Kelly has gone about his business. Casting aside the potential ridicule surrounding an appearance in the Britain’s Got Talent finals, he released an acclaimed debut album The Lost Boys, won the Horizon gong at the BBC Folk Awards, surrounded himself with top-notch musicians and established himself as a credi- ble festival headline act.


More than that, he ticks so many boxes,


it’s hard to see how he couldn’t appeal to most people on some level. There’s the engaging enthusiasm of youth, a pleasing voice, refreshing willingness to take risks, an ease with the tradition as well as his own material, a part-Irish background, a promi- nent talent on a variety of instruments, toes dipped into rock, folk and beyond, a full- blooded band including Jamie Francis (banjo, electric guitar), Toby Shaer (flute, fiddle, pipes), Ciaran Algar (fiddle), Archie Churchill- Moss (melodeon) and Evan Carson (drums) and impressive contacts (there are guest appearances here from Cara Dillon, Mike McGoldrick, Damien O’Kane and Geoff Lake- man on spoons).


Shades of Seth Lakeman in all this, of course, and there are certain parallels (the When The Reivers Call chorus could almost be a Lakeman song), although he’s far more musically ambitious than Seth. Some may even equate his eclecticism with a cynical all-things-to-all-people approach, but that would be an unnecessarily harsh standpoint on an album which does succeed most of the time, where even some of the shakiest ideas are bold and intriguing. The ancient Irish song If I Were A Blackbird may drip in sentimental cliché but a neat segue into Chris Wood’s Ville De Quebec halfway through is brilliant. Hard to find much love


Kate Stables – This Is The Kit


for the old children’s favourite The Keeper, either, until a genuinely exhilarating instru- mental burst kicks in.


And with Jamie Francis’ wondrous banjo at the helm – as it so often is throughout – the darkly mystical The Shining Ship, based on the Scots ballad Demon Lover, teeters on Pink Floyd territory with compelling waves of sonic effects cranking up the tension. Bob Dylan’s Crash On The Levee gets a vigorous, if not entirely convincing, makeover too.


But the range and diversity of the album


– and Kelly’s ability to make it stick – is ably demonstrated by the contrasting styles of the comedic The Close Shave (based on one of Nic Jones’ most beloved tracks, Barrack St) and the superb closing track The Rose, an hypnot- ic dance tune recalled from his time playing mandolin with Belgian band Naragonia and transferred into an evocative English land- scape. He’s a risk-taker but a calculated one…and mostly the calculations add up.


www.samkelly.org Colin Irwin MARY ANN KENNEDY


An Dàn – Gaelic Songs For A Modern World ARC Music EUCD2737


Mary Ann Kennedy is a well-known Scottish traditional musician, broadcaster and radio/ TV presenter. An Dàn (The Poem) is her debut solo album on which Kennedy sets contempo- rary Gaelic poems to music as a conscious con- tinuation of the ancient Gaelic song tradi- tion: “we will sing the old songs, of poetic heroes, love and glory: but there will also be new songs, our own hearts’ music”. All the music here is composed and sung by Kennedy, accompanied by piano, guitars, uil- leann pipes, whistles, bass, string quartet, and backing vocals. The musical arrange- ments are sensitive and beguiling, with the piano and string quartet accompaniment especially graceful and elegant.


In her passion to communicate Gaelic


song’s contemporary relevance, Kennedy tries some interesting and innovative things on this album. The moving First World War elegy Òran Do Dh’iain Dòmhnallach (Song For John Macdonald) features a haunting music sample from a southern African Tswana song about homeland, which vividly enriches the composition. For George Camp- bell Hay’s ‘trippy’ nature-poem Air Leathad Slèibhe (On A Hillside) Kennedy uses drone and echoey production to create a hallucina- tory musical epiphany.


These contemporary Gaelic poems about love, death and nature are much more deeply traditional in theme and imagery than mod- ern poetry in English tends to be. Therefore the standout tracks on this album are the ones in which Kennedy composes accompa- nying melodies in a musical style that is itself deeply influenced by Gaelic tradition. Sìth Na Coille (Forest’s Peace) is a tender love-poem by Aonghas MacNeacail. Kennedy adorns it with lush, lyrical strings, delicate acoustic gui- tar and wistful uilleann pipes. Kennedy’s set- ting of Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul’s magnifi- cent love-poem Gràdh Geal Mo Chridhe (Bright Love of My Heart) is majestically beau- tiful. She puts it to a soulful melody full of yearning, with exquisite string quartet accompaniment.


In Gaelic song tradition (as in French chanson) the words are more important than the music, so it’s a pity that the lyrics and translations are not included in the CD’s accompanying booklet. Happily, Kennedy has posted them online on her website (see below) and I’d strongly recommend reading this wonderful poetry as you listen.


www.maryannkennedy.co.uk Paul Matheson


Photo: Lucy Sugden-Smith


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