The Furrow Collective – Fathoms
Hudson Records – 9 November 2018
Autumn always seems like the perfect time of year to listen to a new Furrow Collective album for the first time. They seem to be able to strike just the right balance between, on one side, folk music’s inherent eeriness, its supernatural or uncanny elements, and on the other, a certain warmth and inclusiveness that is such an important part of how traditional song is passed down and shared. These songs are often full of grisly violence or drawn-out melancholy, they are warnings about the ephemeral nature of human happiness or our capacity for cruelty. And yet they are consumed with pleasure. Like the bloodiest of ghost stories or the saddest gothic dramas, we can listen to them collectively, around an open fire (figurative or literal), and their weird warmth adds to the fire’s warmth, their dangerous themes make us feel paradoxically safe as the nights grow longer and colder.
There is still a need for this kind of music – it helps us understand universal truths about the world, but it is also thrillingly entertaining in and of itself. And while this need persists (and who is to say it will ever stop persisting?) the Furrow Collective are better placed than anyone to meet it. Fathoms is their third album and in terms of how it is put together it follows the same basic blueprint as its two wonderful predecessors, At Our Next Meeting (2014) and Wild Hog (2016): the material is entirely traditional, and all four members contribute pretty much equally in terms of the songs they choose and sing. They call themselves a collective for a reason. Each member brings a unique musical perspective: while all of them take on some vocal duties, Lucy Farrell plays viola and tenor guitar, Rachel Newton plays electroharp and fiddle, Emily Portman plays banjo, concertina and harmonium and Alasdair Roberts contributes acoustic and electric guitars, banjolin, piano, synth and harmonium.
It begins with a single voice: the first verse of Davy Lowston is sung a cappella, firstly by Farrell alone, before the rest of the group join in with some exceptional harmony singing. A droning musical backdrop makes itself known as if from nowhere as the song progresses, and the overall effect is of quiet, cumulative power. The song itself was made well-known by Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick, but is unusual in that it hails from New Zealand, and the earliest days of that country’s colonial history. Its subject-matter – the dangers of seal hunting – is typically grim, but it is sung with a fierce emotional warmth.
The Dark-Eyed Gypsies, here sung by Roberts, is one of Britain’s most familiar folk songs and exists in hundreds of different versions under scores of different names. But even something as well-known as this is given a new, bright spark of life by Roberts’ arrangement. His guitar playing is warm and conversational and the rich, intriguing backing vocals are a thing of beauty. Some credit too must go to producer Andy Bell who has brilliantly preserved the immediacy and collaborational feel of the recording.
The Newton-sung False Lover Won Back is brisk and sweet and deceptively simple, but shot through with almost modernist touches. The lyrics of this beautiful little Scottish tune are uncharacteristically positive, and the music is bounding and hopeful. Continuing the themes of hope and love, Write Me Down is much more contemplative but no less impressive. This version draws heavily on that by Cecilia Costello (an Irish singer who emigrated to Birmingham) but it was also known to be in the repertoire of the Copper family.
Farrell’s False True Love is sung with a clarity that is almost heartbreaking, and the musical accompaniment twinkles sadly. It gives Shirley Collins’ 1967 version a run for its money. The Cruel Grave begins with a disconcerting throb and grows into an itchy, glitchy palette of dark space and enchanting, eldritch singing courtesy of Newton. The Cabin Boy is typical Roberts: quietly expressive guitar, that instantly recognisable voice, a story haunted by death and lost love. It is augmented by beautiful but somehow chilling cascades of notes.
Perhaps the simplest song here, lyrically at least, is My Son David. It takes the form of a dialogue between a son and mother. The son’s admissions of violence worsen with every verse, and the denouement is no less shocking for all that we can see it coming a mile off. Emily’s singing – open and emotionally neutral – and slightly detached feel of her banjo playing further emphasise the coldness of the brutality at the song’s core. Things get even more haunting in Down By The Greenwoodside, a travellers’ song of child murder and lasting, terrible guilt. It has a dreamy (or rather nightmarish) feel, where hallucinatory sounds rise like smoke and threaten to engulf Newton’s voice and undermine any humanity and morality that might remain in the song’s protagonist.
As I Came In By Yon Castle Wall (thought to be a Robert Burns song) is brief but emotionally charged, carried along on a stately but minimal piano. Lady Eliza, here sung by Roberts, traces its roots back to Boccaccio’s Decameron and is a tragic tale – all the more tragic because similar tales are not uncommon, even now – of a love deemed socially unacceptable. True to form, it ends with brutal murder and suicide.
Fathoms’ final piece is its most outwardly collaborative, and its most structurally inventive. It is a splicing together of two songs, Our Ship She’s Ready and I Am A Maid That’s Deep In Love. The first part showcases the group’s harmony singing – something that perhaps was not so evident on their earlier work but really flowers on this album – before moving on to a classic story of maritime cross-dressing. However flippant that might seem, there is a valid and timely point about the difficulties faced by women throughout history and the difficulties they still face today. It ends with a return to the initial tune, but now just with Roberts singing, and fades out on a single, ambiguous droning note, a sound that, like much of this band’s work, sounds simultaneously ancient and modern.
The Furrow Collective are right at the very top of the game when it comes to traditional music. No-one else is as innovative, and in a genre where innovation is sometimes seen as incompatible with the conservation of tradition, they prove that the opposite is true, that by treating folk music in an exciting new way we are helping to safeguard its future. And it is no exaggeration to say that if the future of folk music sounds like Fathoms we are in safe hands indeed.
Pre-Order Fathoms (out 9 November vis Hudson Records) https://thefurrowcollective.lnk.to/fathoms
November 2018 Tour Dates
9th Caernarfon, Galeri
10th Leeds, Howard Assembly Rooms
11th Lincoln, Performing Arts Centre
12th London, Slaughtered Lamb
13th Maidstone, The Bower House
15th Stroud, Marshal Rooms
17th South Pertherton, David Hall
18th Whitstable, Oyster Sessions
23rd Barnsley, Civic Centre
24th Carlisle, Old Fire Station
http://www.thefurrowcollective.co.uk/