107 f
separation between the thumb and fingers of his picking hand sounds like the work of two musicians). Impossible Air, Exilic Excursions and the closing Offering are melodic and tranquil pieces – the latter’s bird songs and ocean waves perhaps offering a tip of the meditative hat to Windham Hill.
Nathan Salsburg is not just a guitarist who can do it all but one who knows how much is enough. His third solo album pro- vides an insight into the world of a deep musician, and its ten tracks offer balm for the soul. You can hear one on this issue’s fRoots 70 compilation.
nathansalsburg.bandcamp.com Steve Hunt STELLA CHIWESHE
Kasahawa: Early Singles Glitter Beat GBCD 061
Stella Chiweshe was the first musician I ever interviewed for fRoots, way back in the ’80s: a dramatic experience. I wrote almost exactly what she said to me, as recorded on my Walk- man tape recorder. I can’t say that I under- stood everything but I hoped that by tran- scribing our conversation exactly as it was that something about being in her presence would be conveyed. She was, and still is, a shaman. A person with power. These early recordings, from the 1970s, are some of the first, if not the first, ever made by a woman playing mbira in Zimbabwe (until then it was a male-only gig) and are interesting especial- ly if you have access to David Toop’s recent African Minimalism article. The debt that American Minimalist composers owe to music such as this is underlined here on these eight tracks. Available on CD and 180 gm vinyl.
glitterbeat.com Mike Cooper
TOM RUSH Voices Appleseed APRCD1141
Another welcome surprise – after a stonking new album from Buffy Sainte-Marie here comes a fine new one from Tom Rush. And apart from two traditional songs they’re all originals, which is worth remarking since he’s only previously recorded about twenty of his own songs over a fifty-year-plus career and eleven studio albums. (Of course, those songs included the magnificent and much-covered No Regrets.) To quote from the sleeve notes: “
..it took me something like 35 years between the Ladies Love Outlaws album…in 1974 and the next studio project , What I Know, in 2009, so I’m picking up the pace.”
There are some classic upbeat country
songs like Far Away and Life is Fine, as in “The fish are biting and the beer is cold/ Night is young and the bourbon’s old”, but there’s also the very dark Cold River, which sounds like an episode from The Grapes of Wrath. The most passionate love song (My Best Girl) turns out to be about his favourite guitar, of course. And If I Never Get Back to Hackensack is the traditional bad gig song – what amazing place names US songwriters have to play with to be sure (think Route 66)!
The two songs he lists as traditional are
Corrina and Elder Green – the latter a take on Alabama Bound, which apparently Charlie Patton did an indecipherable version of and TR now can’t remember who he got the words from. It’s a song about a self-promot- ing preacher, in a similar scurrilous vein to Preachers’ Blues. Not quite sure about Voices – a good song, but he half speaks it, remind- ing me too much of the Deck of Cards genre.
His voice is deep, warm and gentle, occa- sionally reminding me of Derroll Adams. Jim
Kitty Macfarlane
Rooney produces with a top-class bunch of Nashville musicians providing the backing – Al Perkins’ dobro playing is particularly fine.
I think my favourite song is the one he describes as the only age-appropriate one on the album, Going Down to Nashville (one last time). He’s going back there to see if he can find that pretty girl he left behind all those years ago, to say hello and to say goodbye; it has a wistfulness about it that puts me in mind of No Regrets. Except that it turns out he does have a few, after all.
Just for a split second I registered the
affable, white-haired, moustachioed gent on the cover as Rod Stradling… it’s my age, you understand.
tomrush.com Maggie Holland
KITTY MACFARLANE Namer Of Clouds Navigator 104
Kitty’s come a long way since 2010 when her Bus Song was featured on BBC Radio 4; in 2015 a semi-finalist in BBC Radio 2’s Young Folk Awards, then in 2016 releasing a more-than-promising debut EP (Tide And Time).
Her songwriting derives
much creative inspiration from her native Somerset, and in particular her observations of the force of nature and on mankind’s rela- tionship with the wild. Namer Of Clouds is bookended with found sounds, opening with the atmospheric murmuration of Starling Song and closing with a reworking of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem Inversnaid, which entreats us to preserve the wilderness for its peace. Between which, on Man, Friendship (written after the 2014 floods on the Somer- set Levels), Kitty expresses her intense empa- thy with the natural environment, which we need to treat with respect; Glass Eel uses that creature as a metaphor for the phenomenon of enforced migration.
Complementing these reflections are
Seventeen and Dawn And Dark, songs with simpler, more personal messages, and haunt- ing settings of traditional songs Morgan’s Pantry and Frozen Charlotte. There’s also a powerful electric revisit of Wrecking Days (a highlight of Kitty’s EP), and two life-story tributes: the title song concerns pharmacist Luke Howard, while Sea Silk tells of Sardinian seamstress Chiara Vigo.
Kitty’s deft fingerpicked guitar and clear, expressive voice are enhanced by the keen production (Sam Kelly, Jacob Stoney) and support from Jacob, Tom Moore and Josh Clark. Namer Of Clouds is an impressively mature record – and Kitty’s still only barely into her mid-’20s.
kittymacfarlane.com David Kidman RACHAEL McSHANE &
THE CARTOGRAPHERS When All Is Still TopicTSCD596
You imagine Rachael must have adjourned for a very long lie-down when Bellowhead finally disappeared, not in a puff of smoke but a characteristic blaze of fireworks. Perhaps the title indicates the resumption of sanity.
Certainly this is a far more measured and
sedate effort than her rather frenetic first solo album No Man’s Fool in 2009, with Matthew Ord and Julian Sutton providing empathetic accompaniment to her accom- plished violin and viola as well as her wistful vocals. Yet with her old Bellowhead chums Paul Sartin, Andy Mellon, Justin Thurgur and Ed Neuhauser among those making guest appearances, it is still a chunky sound, mak- ing final track Green Broom in particular a joyous reminder of the way Brass Monkey used to approach things.
Other than a mix of original tunes by Julian Sutton and herself, it’s all traditional fare and Rachael doesn’t lack boldness in her choices of material. There’s plenty of fun stuff, kicking off with a jaunty The Mole- catcher, while tracks like Barley & Rye (an old Peter Bellamy hit) and Cropper Lads are easy on the ear; and their version of the old Nic Jones hit Ploughman Lads bounces along nicely over some nifty percussion.
She sounds far less certain, though on the really big songs: I’m not sure her voice has the level of command to carry the full drama of the grizzly Two Sisters.
Yet the interplay between the
Sutton/Ord/McShane triumvirate is exemplary and it does leave a pleasant taste, like a nice pint of Doom Bar on a thirsty night. Nice to see Topic Records back in the game too.
Hear her version of the epic incest ballad Sheath And Knife on this issue’s fRoots 70 compilation.
topicrecords.co.uk Colin Irwin
Photo: Todd MacDonald
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