The Old Swan Band – Fortyfived
Wild Goose – Out Now
Just five years ago, The Old Swan Band celebrated its nominal 40th anniversary in style with the aptly punningly titled Fortyissimo. That CD proclaimed loud and proud from the proverbial rooftops the band’s lofty status, its long-assured place at the forefront of “English” folk dance. For, after all, the Old Swan Band were pioneers – instrumental (both literally and figuratively) in transforming and liberating the somewhat polite and over-decorous English country dance scene of the late-’70s through its full-on, punchy yet deliberately paced delivery and its defiant espousal and exposure of the largely unappreciated treasury of the English (as opposed to Celtic) tune repertoire (indeed, the band’s original name was The Cotswold Liberation Front!). The Old Swan Band’s remit was to encourage dancers once more to actually get out there and dance! And nobody can deny that the band’s influence has stretched on through the decades, with many a dance-oriented outfit forcing a radical re-evaluation of method and practice.
The Old Swan Band’s presence, then, has somehow always been strongly felt – even when for 20 years in the middle between 1983 and 2004 they made no recordings! This hiatus followed a crucial early shift from a melodeon-led to the fiddle-led band dynamic, but in most other respects the Old Swan Band’s lineup has remained quite constant over its tenure, especially considering (or perhaps notwithstanding) the amount of promiscuous overlap of membership between the Old Swan Band and sundry other bands. And yet there’s never been any feeling of artistic compromise (or indeed undue competitiveness) from within or without the ranks, the individual musicians concerned displaying the easy interaction and trading-off that comes of years of this kind of working together on the stand.
At the risk of re-stating the known obvious, the tried-and-tested Old Swan Band complement features a distinctive triple-fiddle front line (Fi Fraser, Paul Burgess and Flos Headford) which is augmented by saxophone and whistle (Jo Freya) and bass sax (Neil Gledhill), the brass contingent then being rounded off by John Adams’ trombone; this joyous little ensemble is reliably underpinned by the solid drive of Heather Horsley’s piano keyboard and Martin Brinsford’s unmistakable, signature wonderfully animated percussion that truly seems to know no rest!
It might seem an act of underselling to describe, albeit with all due honesty, the band’s 45th-anniversary recording as more of the same kind of spirited mixture that characterised its 40th. But in all fairness, this kind of utterly refreshing – yes, most “fortyfiving” – dose of “plus ça change” is just what the doctor ordered, and with all Old Swan Band hallmarks very much present and correct and very much alive and well, there can be no cause for complaint from any quarter. As ever, there’s plenty vitality, the band are having a ball and the listener is carried along at whatever tempo feels right. It’s uplifting, jolly fun all the way, tempered with an easy musicality that doesn’t patronise, and splendidly well recorded.
It’s fair to note, however, that, due to the constant opening-up of research possibilities and resources to hand, discoveries are increasingly being made to the effect that some of the “English” music the band plays actually originates from somewhere else (the converse is also true by the way), and so the broad corpus of available repertoire encourages an ever-all-encompassingly eclectic approach to tune-marrying. And like its predecessor, this CD contains a significant proportion of tunes that lie outside the ambit of well-trodden dance music, including several that I’d not encountered before – always a good sign. The instrumental balance and textural dynamic is faultlessly observed and varied, yet there’s also many an element of delightful surprise in the incidental detail too – as when changes are rung with the incorporation of hammer dulcimer (Fi) on the delicious waltz set (track 6) and harmonica (Martin) on Batt Henry’s Barn Dance, the slightly-Jenny-Lind-soundalike Bälter Svens Paradpolkett (track 2) and the contrarily-named German schottische Tyskan (which the Old Swan Band learned from Ale Möller’s band Frifot).
Elsewhere, listeners’ feet can’t fail to be uprooted by the thoroughly infectious rhythms of the 48-bar jig-quadrille (track 9), and the suitably sprightly Dancing Dustman two-step (a Jimmy Shand favourite) – to name but two selections. And even better-known tunes like Sonny’s Mazurka and the sounds-familiar-but-probably-isn’t pair of Northumbrian tunes (the polka and reel at track 12) receive an unerring pacing that fair gives them a new lease of life. It’s irresistible – and you just can’t put a foot wrong with the Old Swan Band. While it’s another good sign that after 53 minutes of “English dance music from everywhere” (danses sans frontières) you come to the end of track 14 with The Maids Of Ardagh polka and you’re left wanting more! So just play it again!
Onward and upward then – to the Nifty Fifty?
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