This week’s show features a bountiful mix of new folk music releases alongside some great roots music, Americana and more.
Listen on Mixcloud: https://www.mixcloud.com/folkradiouk/lost-in-transmission-no63/
Included is a double-helping from EP1, the highly anticipated debut release (out this Friday 25th September) from the cross-Border Folk/Americana band, The Magpie Arc which were our Artists of the Month back in June (read our interview here and extract below). The band features Nancy Kerr, Martin Simpson, Adam Holmes, Tom A Wright and Alex Hunter. EP2 and EP3 are to follow at in October and November.
“If you look it up, the heyday of Folk-Rock is down as 1969-1976 and despite Fairport and Steeleye valiantly carrying the flag on to today, it has been a bit static since then,” muses Alex. “We wanted to form a new band with a “nod” to that time, as it was so innovative and exciting for electric folk music, and a loose reference point we talked about when we first got together, I remember, was the earlier “Holidays-era” Fairport, but only in the way that they flirted with the tradition in terms of the melodies and subjects on some of their own songs, whilst combining them with the influences of the day. Comparisons might be made, as people are wont to do, but we’re not the full-on “Trad-Arr”, or indeed looking to fly that flag. What we wanted to achieve was that rich stew of folk, country, blues and rock ‘n’ roll that bands were discovering and experimenting with, and which made it such a fondly remembered time, but mixed with our own voices, and we’re very, very excited to have done that in the music that we’re making”
Read the full interview.
We also have music from our current Artist of the Month Joshua Burnell from his new album Flowers Where The Horses Sleep (Review / Interview).
“…I just wanted it to be a solid Pop-Rock song with supernatural elements in there. It started with that production, that feel, that piano loop and a drum loop. I was looking around for a story and I’d been listening to a lot of podcasts at the time, quite a few on witchcraft for one reason or another. Morgan La Fay is the ultimate figure for witchcraft so I just started researching and it all came together.”
Joshua Burnell on the song Le Fay featured in this week’s show
The method in his ambition is creating brilliant accessible music, bursting at the seams with ideas, imagery and an assured ability with melody and song structure, I sincerely hope that he catches the ears of many more people going forward. Outstanding.
Danny Neill on Burnell’s new album Flowers Where The Horses Sleep
From our current Featured Albums of the Month, we have Bróna McVittie whose latest release, The Man in the Mountain was reviewed by Thomas Blake (read it here).
The Man In The Mountain’s predecessor was one of the best releases of 2018, but somehow Brona McVittie has surpassed herself. There is an added maturity, a new breadth of influence, and a creative control that sets this album apart. But she never loses the wide-eyed sense of wonder at the poetry of the natural world. If she set out to reflect that beauty and that wonder in music, she has succeeded admirably.
Another Featured Album of the Month is Wrackline by Fay Hield which was also reviewed by Thomas Blake here.
The imagery is stunning, the language highly original. The relationship between hare and witch is rendered electric and intimate, almost sexual in its vocabulary of passion. It is wonderfully performed too – Hield gives herself to the song as completely as the hare gives up its body to the witch. It is a rapturous and strangely life-affirming way to end a record that is often haunted by death or loss, and it helps to cement the album as more than a mere collection of songs. Wrackline is a stunning and complete work of art, put together with great care and skill and performed with Hield’s distinctive magic.
Of the remaining music are two recent tracks which premiered recently on Folk Radio UK. We were bowled over by the unmistakable heartfelt tender vocals of Lady Nade and her brilliant new single Ain’t One Thing, it’s an uplifting joyful listen with an underlying 60s folk vibe that carries over onto the stylish artwork for the single.
Also, Herman Dune treated us to his video for lead single Say You Love Me Too, a Weight-y slice of hopeful romanticism calling to mind The Band, from his new album ‘Notes From Vinegar Hill’.
We also have a number of new releases which we’ve covered, including David A Jaycock‘s Murder, and the Birds (reviewed here), Gillian Welch‘s Boots No 2: The Lost Songs, Vol 2, Josephine Foster‘s surprise new album No Harm Done, a demo track from the forthcoming Trees 50th Anniversary Boxset and The Yellow Of The Flowers, the new single and opening track of ‘Receiver’, the fourth album from The Rheingans Sisters (watch the accompanying video directed by Sam Wisternoff).
Plus new music from Elvis Perkins, Sing Leaf and Conrad Vingoe and Lunatraktors with music from their forthcoming Bonfires EP out on Oct 16th, 2020.
Enjoy
Music Played:
The Magpie Arc – Canon
Joshua Burnell – Le Fay
Lady Nade – Ain’t One Thing
Herman Dune – Say You Love Me Too
Joan Shelley – Coming Down For You
Alma Forrer – Bobby
Bróna McVittie – The Green Man
David A Jaycock – Pendle Hill (Lancashire)
Trees – Polly on the Shore (demo 1970)
Fay Hield – Night Journey
The Magpie Arc – Love Never Dies
Sabine McCalla – Stole My Heart
Reverend Edward Clayborn – Then We’ll Need That True Religion
Gillian Welch – Good Baby
John Jacob Niles – John Henry
The Rheingans Sisters – The Yellow of the Flowers
Lunatraktors – 16,000 Miles
Elvis Perkins – Sing Sing
Sing Leaf – Forever Green
Josephine Foster – The Wheel of Fortune
Conrad Vingoe – Horses