59 f


FRIGG Frost On Fiddles Frigg FRIGG00011


Exuberant as ever, five years of gigging since the last album, here’s the smart new set of snappy original tunes from these prime expo- nents of the very distinctive present-day dialect of Finnish fiddling engine room Kaustinen. A thing of winding melodies over unexpected chord changes, it has evolved, via the new ideas, harmonising and composition of JPP, from the simpler but attractive dance, wed- dings and funerals music of Purppuripeliman- nit and other pelimanni bands into today’s extraordinary fluency, energy and excitement.


As the world has come to Kaustinen, and its musicians have travelled, Frigg has absorbed ideas from beyond, including Swe- den, Norway and the USA, made into a unique voice of Kaustinen that doesn’t sound like any of them.


The band – Esko Järvelä, Alina Järvelä,


Tero Huovaloma and Tommi Asplund’s exu- berant fiddles, Tuomas Logrén and Petri Prau- da’s frets, and new bassist Juho Kivivuori – will be touring, with a Finnish fiddle tunes workshop before every show, for a week in the UK in late November. Go see, if you can get to Cambridge, Cardiff, Bury, Nottingham, Malvern, Bradford-on-Avon or Horsham; their records are good, but live is the way to catch the spirit and fun.


www.frigg.fi Andrew Cronshaw FAIRPORT CONVENTION


Come All Ye: The First Ten Years 1968- 1978 Universal UMC5748479


The Convention and their alumni aren’t short of box sets, let’s be honest. Hang on, I’ll just check the shelf… Hutchings, Thompson, Denny, Swarbrick, Pegg, even Cropredy… and yep, Fairport, all present and correct. 2017 being Fairport’s half-century – not out – it was perhaps inevitable some kind of memen- to would appear. What gives confidence here is the presence of Andrew Batt’s name as co- ordinator; he’s not only done his research but he’s tweaked a good percentage of the source material to ensure quality. Some of the tracks here are legendary, some recent discoveries, yet more archæology of worth – in all 55 never before given official sanction, but there are missed opportunities too. The final two studio albums are under-represented and it would have been honest to include something from Farewell Farewell, Conven- tion’s official sign-off though technically falling outside the strict limits of a decade. A few samples of the six-piece version of the band who plugged the much derided Gottle O’Geer, would have been canny; live selec- tions from Germany and Norway on the web show they were far better than history recalls. Yet such nitpicking is trivial, what’s here is well worth the price even if you’re already familiar with their repertoire, as Come All Ye documents their most prolific period.


Seven discs, 121 tracks, though it’s impor- tant to note that what comes across by the end is an air of celebration rather than narra- tion. The contents are enough to satisfy anoraks as well as the casually curious, arranged chronologically, starting with Richard Thompson’s voluminous guitar stabs on Time Will Show The Wiser and concluding with a live Flowers Of The Forest from an STV appearance in 1976 (the track was played at Sandy Denny’s funeral in April 1978, a monu- mental date in Fairport lore). From the early stock a solo Denny vocal on Eastern Rain is a delight, likewise a more laid-back take of The Deserter benefits from a looser setting mak- ing it altogether more comfy. The Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood is totally spaced out and bliss-


ful, only Swarbrick’s fiddle reminds you this is Fairport circa Liege & Lief. It’s not until Disc three that the unearthed treasures show up in plenty via the Full House crew live on French TV. Next are the extracts from the Beeb’s TV documentary of The Man They Couldn’t Hang for which a remarkably different Fairport – mixed personnel – recorded the soundtrack.


On Disc four, at long last the Manor


Tapes – until now a bootleg – are opened. At the time the band was down to Swarb and Peggy, Tom Farnell sat in the drum seat and David Rea was flown in from Canada to play guitar. What comes across is a gathering of demos, of which the strongest has Swarbrick’s vocals. The trad instrumental Rattletrap is the pick. Disc six presents an entire Nine line-up set from 1973 at Fairfield Halls. Whilst they’d only been together a few months here the band can be heard trying to forge a distinct identity with little reference beyond a couple of selections to anything pre 1972. The glory of One More Chance is here in a brilliant alternate take with Sandy in full flight. Disc seven is the splendid LA Troubadour 1974 set already praised in these pages as part of the Rising For The Moon Deluxe compilation.


Come All Ye stands on its own merits. Love folk rock, love Fairport then you need this. I hesitate to say it but this may well be the last box set of Fairport you should invest in… but then I’ve thought that before! Avail- able all over the place.


Simon Jones


NANCY KERR, HANNAH MARTIN, FINDLAY NAPIER, GREG RUSSELL, TIM YATES Shake The Chains Quercus QRCD003


The more scarily surreal these times become, the more of a gift they should be for the righ- teous songwriter with outrage in the heart and venom in the pen. A period, you imag- ine, when the new generation of songwriters rise as a real force, armed with free-flowing indignation and colourful couplets to shout, scream and demand attention. The admirable Grace Petrie apart, there don’t seem to be too many stepping up to the plate at present.


You might hope that with its bold cover and correspondingly powerful title track, Shake The Chains might just be serving notice about the arrival of a new vanguard of protest music. One of those themed multi- artist confections that are all the rage at the moment, it certainly addresses some impor- tant issues with class, style and even a certain grace (but not Grace unfortunately) but is unlikely to inspire anyone to man the barri- cades any time soon.


Commissioned by Folk By The Oak, it’s a live recording for one thing, but audience passions sound rather less than full-blooded and even classic old songs of dissent like If I Had A Hammer, We Shall Overcome and Freedom Come All Ye are delivered rather too tamely for the task in hand. Of the non-original material, Nancy Kerr’s heartfelt interpreta- tion of Adrian Mitchell’s stirring Victor Jara Of Chile, cleverly bookended by a Denis Kevans poem, probably works best.


In isolation the tracks work well. The excellence of Kerr’s songwriting on Poison Apples and Through The Trees can never be questioned, while Hannah Martin’s Yarl’s Wood is a formidable heartbreaker in the context of the new Edgelarks album with Phillip Henry. Yet the only tracks that get the blood pulsing in the way you imagine to be at the heart of the concept are Bunch Next Door, Greg Russell’s bluesy riposte to Nigel Farage’s barely disguised racism, Findlay Napier’s poignant lament on the decline of


the shipbuilding industry (Building Ships) and that rugged anthem of a title track, the one moment that offers a flicker of real attitude and revolution in the air.


The rest is beautifully crafted and superbly played songs about the Greenham Common protests of the 1980s (Through The Trees), threats to the environment (Glory Of The Sun) and multi-culturalism (Side By Side), but I’m not sure beauty is what is required here.


www.shakethechains.com Colin Irwin LO’JO [Fonetiq Flowers]World Village WV 479127


Lo’Jo have been knocking around since the early 1980s and this is the French collective’s fifteenth album. Recorded all over the map: France, US, Korea and Georgia (the country not the US state), it’s the freshest-sounding thing they’ve done for a while. The essential Lo’Jo ingredients are still in place. Gravelly- voiced singer Denis Pean (it’s customary to mention Tom Waits at this point), Richard Bourreau’s distinctive violin, the impassioned voices of Algerian singing sisters Nadia and Yamina El Mourid, all make their umpteenth appearances. But all that travelling seems to have done them good and there are a few unexpected ingredients in the pot.


They’ve always been ones to embrace an open-minded culture-crossing approach, mar- ried to a distinctively French mix of smoke- stained bohemianism, folkiness and experi- mental edges. Here, some guests are wel- comed into the fold. French jazz trumpet bigshot Erik Truffaz drops in on a couple of tracks. There’s Swiss rapper Miro and one track even has a chorus of children (which works surprisingly well). The sound is broadened out with a range of North African instru- ments, plus bassoon, kora and gayageum (Korean zither), to name but a few.


It’s a winning formula, light and spare but with a whole raft of moods and influ- ences. This is the best kind of world music (if that term is still acceptable currency), looking out from a strongly rooted sound to embrace all-comers. All in all, a good time to get reac- quainted with the Lo Jo tribe.


www.lojo.org/


Jamie Renton Lo’Jo


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