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MICHAEL CHAPMAN True North Paradise Of Bachelors PoB-044
STEVE GUNN The Unseen In Between Matador OLE13092
MEG BAIRD & MARY
LATTIMORE Ghost Forests Three Lobed TLR-125
I’ve lost track of the number of albums the indefatigable Michael Chapman has released and, given his propensity for always plough- ing ahead and refusing to rest on his laurels, I doubt that he knows either. True North does, however, find him in the mood to reflect, ruminate and reminisce on times past in a col- lection with titles like It’s Too Late, Vanity & Pride and Youth Is Wasted On The Young.
Produced, like his 2017 ’American album’
50, by Steve Gunn (who contributes guitar and drums here) this is a subtly yet markedly different record. Made in the UK with Chap- man’s British touring band of pedal steel player BJ Cole and cellist Sarah Smout and long-term friend Bridget St John on duet and backing vocals, it’s both figuratively and liter- ally ‘closer to home’.
Full Bottle Empty Heart reveals the vul- nerability behind that well-worn Yorkshire cowboy, tough guy persona, while the unre- pentant laugh that punctuates Bon Ton Roolay indicates Chapman’s lost none of his grit. St John is outstanding on After All This Time and Smout’s cello provides the perfect accompaniment to Chapman’s guitar on Caddo Lake. Chapman leaves the lion’s share of the soloing to Cole, staying focused on the overall feel of the songs, rather than indulging in fretboard pyrotechnics.
Whilst True North doesn’t possess the same kind of muscular intensity that Gunn’s cohorts James Elkington and Nathan Bowles brought to 50, it is nonetheless a rewarding and often moving record, immaculately pro- duced and performed by an artist still at the top of his game at 78 years of age.
michaelchapman.co.uk
When I interviewed Steve Gunn for this magazine in November 2016 (fR 405) he was attempting to process both the recent loss of his father, and the election (just a few days previously) of Donald Trump as U.S. President. Interesting times indeed, out of which Gunn’s fourth solo album has emerged as his most coherent and satisfying work yet. His singing has acquired more authority, his songwriting more gravitas, and his guitar playing… well, that’s always been sensational.
Fans of Gunn’s electric guitar style will find plenty to enjoy in New Moon – a suitably shimmering opener featuring some expres- sive soloing with antecedents in both Richard Thompson and Johnny Marr – and in the epic New Familiar. His sterling acoustic playing is showcased on Morning Is Mended and the memorable meditation on paternal life lessons, Stonehurst Cowboy. Accompanied just on acoustic guitar and bass, the intimacy of the song’s lyrics is echoed and enhanced by the conversational interplay between Gunn and Tony Garnier’s instruments. Paranoid (in case you wondering) is not the Black Sabbath hit. Deftly produced by James Elkington, this is an album of the first water by an excep- tional talent and one of music’s good guys.
stevegunn.com
The pairing of guitarist and singer Meg Baird (Espers, The Baird Sisters, Heron Obliv- ion) and classical and experimental harpist Mary Lattimore has lately been out and about in the U.S. as Steve Gunn’s tour sup- port. All were participants on the extraordi- narily fruitful Philadelphia scene of the early 21st century, but this is Baird and Lattimore’s first duo collaboration.
Opening instrumental Between Two
Worlds serves both as introduction to and descriptor of what follows. Baird and Latti- more’s music is an attraction of opposites, embodied in the distorted and pure tones of guitar and harp, seemingly in a quest to find the missing link between Sonic Youth and Clannad. It’s somehow calming, disorienting and exhilarating – all at the same time.
Their original songs are mysterious
abstractions. Damaged Sunset features an almost whispered vocal over a relentless, chiming 12-string, while In Cedars is a dream- like invocation.
A graceful reading of Fair Annie – the venerable Child Ballad recorded by both Peter Bellamy and Martin Simpson, closes proceedings and acts as a trigger to listening to the whole entrancing album again.
threelobed.bandcamp.com Steve Hunt SANDRA KERR & JOHN
FAULKNER The Music From Bagpuss Earth Records EARTHCD033
It’s astonishing to consider the cultural endurance of Peter Firmin and Oliver Post- gate’s saggy old cloth cat. Running for just thir- teen episodes in 1974, Bagpuss has continued to appeal to different ages, in different ages. An integral part of its perennial charm is the soundtrack. Giving the reins to folk musicians Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner (who appear as the rag doll Madeleine and Gabriel the banjo- playing toad respectively) was an inspired touch pretty much unthinkable now in chil- dren’s programming. This remastered sound- track of 32 songs including outtakes and extras – as beautifully packaged as we’ve come to expect from Earth Records – is a timely release given the current enthusiasm for found sounds, reclaimed objects and the hauntological recur- rence of 1970s culture (which can perhaps be attributed to the increasingly similar bleakness of the world stage).
Kerr and Faulkner’s appropriation of tra- ditional melodies like Sumer is Icumen In (the oldest known English vernacular song) for the much-loved mice songs are eerily time- less, while ballads like the Bony King of Nowhere and The Miller’s Song have attained a quasi-traditional status of their own. Listen- ing to this reduces you to bobbin-height, until you too are rolling among lost toys and scraps. Like all good children’s telly, a haunt-
ing poignancy runs beneath its wholesome message of redemption and repair. I hope people will play this to their children and grandchildren; it’s too good just for adults.
earthrecordlabel.com Clare Button OUR NATIVE DAUGHTERS
Songs Of Our Native Daughters Smithso- nian Folkways SFWCD 40232
There’s so much strength packed into this disc it should come with a warning. The band – Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, Leyla McCalla and Allison Russell, along with pro- ducer/co-conspirator Dirk Powell – have pro- duced an album that gives powerful voice to American women of colour. And this is very much an American album, albeit the America that’s been silenced and ignored for too long.
Right out of the blocks there’s no stop- ping these women, with Kiah’s Black Myself a strutting, swaggering blues, followed by the appealingly off-kilter rhythm and glorious har- monies of Moon Meets The Sun, with Powell’s subtle guitar taking the song to West Africa [hear it on this issue’s fRoots 72 compilation… Ed.]. And that’s just the beginning. It continues from strength to strength with all four women contributing songs, voices and instruments in different combinations, and the constant throughout of the banjo, an instrument that originated in Africa and was brought over with the slaves only to find itself quite sudden- ly an American instrument. So this is about reclaiming birthrights in American music. Blues, country, and women, like Polly Ann’s Hammer, which tells the other side of John Henry, or Mama’s Cryin’ Long, a song even more stark and terrifying than Strange Fruit.
The only non-original here is Bob Mar-
ley’s Slave Driver, brought into sharp relief and relevance, not just for the globe but for the United States. It’s followed by Better Git Yer Learnin’, where the banjo tune comes from a 19th-century book of minstrel songs, the words rewritten to highlight the dangers and difficulties for former slaves in receiving an education. With the pattern of a children’s song, perhaps it’s something kids ought to learn in history class; a sobering lesson that sounds hewn from the past.
An album like this is what modern Amer- ica needs. Emotional and harrowing, this is the real narrative.
folkways.si.edu Chris Nickson Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla & Amythyst Kiah – Our Native Daughters
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