119 f
Ian Carr, when he still lived in Britain, was accompanying guitarist of choice for many including Swåp, Kathryn Tickell, Kate Rusby, Eddi Reader and Kris Drever, and is occasionally enticed back to continue some of those connections, while also playing in Swe- den with his wife Maria Jonsson, Sofia Karls- son, Sandén Nygårds Carr and others. It’s a measure of the man that it took him until 2013 to make his first, and only, actual solo album, Who He?
Their previous duo album, Step On It!, came out in 2003; this album’s title reflects that hiatus, but Carr’s rising and step- descending tune of that name, here coupled with Roswall’s asymmetrically lurching Pro- teinpolska, was written to commemorate his and Maria’s wedding anniversary.
dalakollektivet.se,
westparkmusic.de Andrew Cronshaw
EM MARSHALL The Building Light Cotton Mill CMR005
This debut from Devon-based songwriter Em Marshall has all the barren rusticity that you’d expect from an album recorded in a former cowshed in rural Wales. What you might not expect is an assurance and original- ity that are usually the domain of more sea- soned artists. The voice is instantly com- pelling: bruised and intimate (shades of Natalie Merchant and Laura Marling), emerg- ing over a plaintive fiddle and gently undu- lating guitar on True Lovers Farewell. This is one of three traditional songs – the others being Rosemary Lane and the May Morning Dew – which Marshall inhabits as completely as her own quietly remarkable songs.
Much of her voice’s sad wisdom, one sus- pects, is hard-earned and hard-won: she spent much of her adolescence without a home, travelling the world and busking before suffering a serious motorcycle acci- dent in India. Devon became a recuperative haven which has inspired these songs of long- ing, reflection and calm honesty. Produced by Tim Jones (Tim Jones and the Dark Lanterns) and mastered by Ian Carter (Stick In The Wheel), this is lo-fi, late-night music from a brave and beautiful new voice.
Hear the title track on this issue’s fRoots 72 compilation.
emmamarshall@live.co.uk Clare Button
RUTH NOTMAN & SAM KELLY
Changeable Heart Pure PRCD52
2007 Radio 2 Young Folk Award finalist Ruth, after releasing two impressive albums Threads and The Life Of Lilly, abandoned music for medical studies, but now returns to the folk scene in a new teaming with 2016 Horizon Award winner Sam Kelly. Apparently Sam, having long admired Ruth’s talent, con- tacted her out of the blue, and their bond was such that they were able to swiftly put together a joint album. And hey presto…
Vocally the pair are well matched, and Changeable Heart focuses firmly on this blend, but all the while the ear is still capti- vated by Damien O’Kane’s signature produc- tion and the instrumental contributions of Josh Clark, Ross Ainslie and Anthony Davis as well as those of Ruth, Sam and Damien them- selves (variously accordeon, piano, numerous guitars and of course banjo).
Thematically, Changeable Heart natu- rally concentrates on songs of love, from tra- ditional (Bold Fisherman, Caw The Yowes, My Lagan Love, The Cunning Cobbler) to the
SOLJU
Ođđá Áigodat – New Times Bafe’s Factory MBA023 / Nordic Notes NN109
Ulla Pirttijärvi has long been one of the most distinctive interpreters of music based on Sámi joik and combining its feel with more song-like music.
The vocal sounds that joikers use, while they vary from joiker to joiker, are instantly identi- fiable, and they’re strong in Ulla’s characteris- tic shell-like voice.
Now her daughter Hildá Länsman (who recently performed in London) has become an equally fine exponent, with a matching voice, and the two of them, with synth pro- grammer Samuli Laiho and Teho Majamäki, and joined for a couple of tracks by the strings of the Czech Symphony Orchestra, have made the most striking, varied and melodious Sámi album of recent times.
Mother and daughter alternate lead vocals and share songwriting, except for the one traditional joik, and the results move between gorgeous richness, close confiding- ness, muttering gutturalness, and the primal wildness of native American pow-wow music. Laiho and Majamäki’s work, on program- ming, synths, other instruments and percus- sion, is adventurous, inventive, varied, big, meaty and sometimes beaty.
Em Marshall
rock-tinged title number. Sam and Ruth pro- vide particularly appealing takes on Paul Brady’s The Island and MacColl’s School Days Over, while fans of sensitive singing will find much to admire in Sam’s delicate account of Sweet Lass Of Richmond Hill and Ruth’s own composition As You Find Your Way Home (for all that the latter, along with the ensu- ing trad-arr Young Brian Of The Sussex Wold, sound to have strayed from a Kate Rusby album).
There’s promise in this teaming, sure, but perhaps also a tiny suspicion of too much too quickly.
notmanandkelly.com David Kidman
Joik itself is a way of remembering, a personal thing, and it’s hard to combine it with instrumentation and take a more song- like approach without losing its essence or making it just a flavour. But they’ve achieved that splendidly here.
bafesfactory.fi Andrew Cronshaw
VIGŰELA A Tiempo Real ARC Music EUCD2806
Viguela were one of the attractions at the 2017 Womad. This year's tours have taken them to Poland and the Czech Republic but most of their appearances are at home in central Spain where many of their engage- ments are at community events.
There seems to be little compromise in
the way Viguela present themselves and one sentence from the way they introduce them- selves is striking: "To embed this music in schemes from pop, jazz, rock in an alleged 'contemporaneity' only achieves simplifica- tion and denaturation which is rejected by traditional performers."
They concentrate on the folk song of their own area of Central Spain and draw their repertoire from the land-locked centre of the Iberian peninsula, the province of Castilla-La Mancha. In various combinations of their seven members they offer solo, duo or group songs and in the main their only accompaniment is hand-held drums. All the songs are carefully sourced to where they first heard them; most of these are from local traditional singers from in or near their own village but they acknowledge all their sources, anywhere from from “Collected by Alan Lomax in 1952” to “YouTube”.
This is hardcore traditional song with no conciliation or concession on their part but it is difficult not to be swept up in the enthusi- asm and energy which inhabits the twenty- five songs on this double CD.
arcmusic.co.uk Vic Smith
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