Kelly Oliver – Botany Bay
Self Released – 28 September 2018
Following two albums on Folkstock, Hertfordshire-based Kelly Oliver strikes out on her own with a third release that also marks a departure from its predecessors in that everything on it is a traditional folk song, arranged by Oliver or in collaboration with producer Stu Hanna. More specifically, they’re all songs that were collected from her home county, many by Lucy Etheldred Broadwood, a founder of the Folk Song Society and a prime mover in the English folk revival of the late 19th/early 20th century.
Pretty much all are staples of the folk repertoire, but Oliver, in the musical company of bassist Lukas Drinkwater, Hanna on mandola and piano, and Jamie Francis, Evan Carson and Toby Shaer from Sam Kelly’s Lost Boys on banjo, percussion and flute/whistle/harmonium/fiddle, respectively, she brings her own personality to them.
It romps out of the starting gate with a mandola leading the charge on a lively reading of The Miser And His Daughter that features Carson on bodhran. It is the tale of a young girl trying to prevent her sailor lover from being transported, only to find her father’s behind it. The theme of transportation continues with a suitably sober, flute and banjo-shaped tale on the title track of convicts shipped off to Australia (the video for which premiered on Folk Radio UK).
The longest number here, clocking in six and half minutes, The Trees They Do Grow High recounts the arranged marriage of a woman to the sickly teenage son of a great lord, her dad having an eye on the prize at the end, the spare arrangement of just guitar and Phil Beer’s fiddle complementing Oliver’s achingly vulnerable vocal.
The pace quickens as she casts her net over The Bold Fisherman, a shanty-like tale of a young maid mistaking a nobleman for a mere fisherman, but still ending up his wife, Oliver on harmonica and Shaer providing flutes, fiddle and harmonium as well as the whistle tune coda.
Remaining nautical, rather than the propulsive versions of Steeleye Span and June Tabor and the Oysterband, Dark Eyed Sailor gets a new, slower waltzing lease of life with bodhran, double bass and Oliver and Hanna duetting on mandola and mandolin before things turn darker for a heavily percussive The Bramble Briar’s tale of two brothers who murder their sister’s servant lover, she in return ensuring they’re hung.
Keeping things downbeat, arranged for just vocoder-treated voice to a new tune by Oliver and Hanna, the echoingly a capella singing of Lady Margaret perfectly suits its take of a wronged woman who, dying of heartbreak, coming back to haunt the bloke who married someone else instead.
In addition to a prettier arrangement with Shaer’s flutes and whistles and harmonium, Oliver gives a #MeToo makeover to The Cuckoo’s Nest, one of the bawdiest songs in the folk tradition. She rewrites the last verse so that, rather than succumbing to his roving eye and satisfying the man’s desires, the woman here tells him to take a hike.
It’s back to sea for the urgent bodhran, fiddle, banjo and bass Irish jig stomping take on Caroline and Her Young Sailor Bold, basically a happier answer to the opening number. However, no one wants to end a folk album on an upbeat note, hence Died Of Love, another account of a woman spurned by a faithless lover, a sailor, inevitably, who after impregnating her, goes off with another, she wishing to die and saddle him with the baby. Featuring Francis on banjo, it’s the only track on which Oliver doesn’t sing solo, joined in harmonising duet with the inestimable Luke Jackson to bring things to a sterling finish.
It’s often the case that emergent young folk singers start out mining traditional folk roots before sewing their own crop, in reversing the cycle Oliver not only underscores her own songwriting influences but, in visiting them directly, proves herself very much in command of rather than in thrall to them too.
Pre-Order via Bandcamp (CD/Digital): https://kellyolivermusic.bandcamp.com/album/botany-bay
Botany Bay Album Tour 2018
SEPTEMBER
8 – BROMSGROVE – The Artrix
19 – SCOTLAND – Aberdeen Folk Club
20 – SCOTLAND – Montrose Folk Club
21 – SCOTLAND -Strathaven Folk Club
OCTOBER
5 – COVENTRY – Big Comfy Bookshop
6 – GLOUCESTERSHIRE – Under The Edge Arts Centre
10– LONDON -Cecil Sharp House *ALBUM LAUNCH*
12 – SURREY -Cranleigh Arts Centre
13 – PURLEY-ON-THAMES – Village Concerts
16 – DEVON -Bradninch Folk Club
19 – PENZANCE -The Acorn
25 – LEICESTER The Musician
NOVEMBER
2 – SUFFOLK – Hadleigh Folk Club
3 – CHESTER – House Concert
8 – MILTON KEYNES – The Stables
9 – LINCOLNSHIRE – Market Rasen Festival Hall
More details here http://kellyoliver.co.uk/