Dyble Longdon: Between A Breath and a Breath
Over her solo albums, Dyble showed an enthusiasm to experiment with different musical forms and textures as well as the use of often metaphysical, symbolic and expressionist imagery and, while this might not prove the work for which she is most remembered, it’s a bittersweet understatement to mark what was and is her finest hour.
Edgelarks: Henry Martin
Closing track The Seeds Of Love was the first song collected by Cecil Sharp, and as such holds a place as a kind of ur-text for English traditional music. It stands to reason, given the admirably forward-thinking way in which Martin and Henry make music, that it provides one of the album’s most experimental moments, full of wordless backing vocals that mimic the sounds of birds and insects, the quiet hum of the outdoors, an English arcadia that is currently beyond the reach of many. It ends on the most positive of notes, with the words ‘give it time it will rise again,’ and that positivity sums up Edgelarks’ music as a whole and this superb album in particular: resolutely optimistic, brilliantly played and a joy from start to finish.
Eliza Carthy & Ben Seal: Through That Sound (My Secret Was Made Known)
Eliza Carthy’s latest record finds her returning to her own songwriting in a set that collects together nine new songs and one cover. Stylistically, it’s quite a contrast from the more traditional-folk-inflected Restitute package that Eliza released last year, and much of its unusual, yet quirkily accessible flavour is characterised by the signature hand of Fife-based composer, musician, songwriter and producer-arranger Ben Seal. Oh yes, and the surreal, phantasmagorical artwork by Kirsty Whiten…
Elle Osborne: If You See a Rook on Its Own, It’s a Crow
If you’ve yet to have the pleasure, in Rob Curry and Tim Plester’s wonderful documentary, The Ballad of Shirley Collins, her close friend and long-time champion, David Tibet (Current 93), tells Collins to her face that he loves her (and, of course, her late sister Dolly’s) music because it is “so intimate, and true, and beautiful, because it’s real,” continuing to say that “when people feel something that is so true…and so innocent…their hearts open, their hearts respond.” Coincidentally, Tibet’s earnest words pretty much sum up how I feel about If You See a Rook on Its Own, It’s a Crow, the 4th full-length offering from another of Collins’ dear friends, Elle Osborne.
It is indeed all of those things – intimate, true, beautiful, and real – so much so that after the first few run-throughs I needed to rationalize whether my elevated emotional reaction to its rarefied wonder was due to some kind of pandemic-evoked state of hypersensitivity, or simply because it’s a bona fide masterpiece. My conclusion, I’m glad to report, is the latter. Truly, this is a very, very special record.
Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin & Ultan O’Brien – Solas an Lae
…if we were looking for a contemporary rendition of sean-nós, then I would suggest that there would be no better place to start than here. Solas an Lae is the complete package, the tune and the words and the presentation together encompassing the emotional tales of the tragedy of life. To me, this is what makes sean-nós what it is. And here it is being continued, and continually worked on by young artists. The importance of the tradition is to recognise that it is not a static beast but one that keeps moving, branching, embracing. And singing about the issues that matter, great and small. Excellent.
Erlend Apneseth: Fragmentarium
Despite Fragmentarium’s disparate influences, there is a theme that runs throughout the album and manifests itself as a kind of flicker, a quick movement between light and dark. It is a way of saying, without words, that everything is included and everything is of importance, the accordion’s exhalation would be nothing without its initial intake of breath, the fiddle notes would not make sense without the space and silence that exists between them. This is an album that owes everything to the interconnectedness of things, and is well aware of that fact. The final track, Omkved, is the perfect example, an ensemble piece that rises and falls almost tidally, where swift musicianship creates the illusion of timelessness and endless repetition. It is elemental and challenging music, but such is the skill of Apneseth and his band it feels beautifully simple.
Ewan McLennan: Borrowed Songs
Borrowed Songs is Ewan’s first release since Loneliness, and it sees him back on more familiar ground, with an album of eight songs, half self-penned, put to modest arrangements of guitar, banjo and Sam Moore’s lovely violin and viola playing. In fact, Borrowed Songs comes across as a modest release in many ways; its run time is just thirty-five minutes, and its packaging is attractive yet simple, with brief but insightful notes on each song. It all comes across as an austere release, with Ewan seemingly purposefully leaving himself nothing to hide behind.
Similarly to Sam Sweeney’s Unearth Repeat, Borrowed Songs contains pieces both original and traditional and treats them in the same way, which is as songs and stories that need to be kept alive by playing them, hearing them and passing them on. This brief and quietly powerful album is one of subtle beauty and astute skill.
Fabian Holland: Under the Red Island Bakery
There is a point about six minutes or so into ‘Two Men in a Boat’, the opening song from British born Berlin-based Fabian Holland‘s third album, where the peril and ultimate tragedy of the two allegorical sailors is illustrated through low spectral drone notes through a lap steel guitar. The touch would be effective enough in itself in evoking the sombre and defeated mood of our two narrators (‘both now agree, they won’t stay on this boat, they’re best off at sea’) and Holland’s view of Brexit, which the song comments on, but this is a one day, one-take-project with no overdubs, which makes it all the more impressive. It also epitomises Under the Red Island Bakery, which is an album full of beautifully written personal songs, arranged with remarkable attention to detail in a deceptively simple format.
Fay Hield: Wrackline
Wrackline is an album full of pleasing and brilliantly executed internal mirrors and unexpected directions. It is a world lovingly crafted by Hield, with its own logic, its own depths of meaning. So it is fitting that, with the closing track When She Comes, it comes full circle. Here Hield uses the words of Sarah Hesketh, who writes from the point of view of the hare that first made an appearance in the opening song. 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.
Fidil: Decade
The distinctive Fidil sound is noted for its exemplary dynamic balance and wholly intuitive responses, while its carefully experimental texturings may involve such techniques as pizzicato and slurred scraping without fear of distraction from the musicality and tunefulness of the whole performance. It’s great too that one can fully appreciate the different – and gloriously individual – timbres and resonances of the various instruments used by virtue of the excellent definition and body of the recording. The focus is on the energy and momentum, while never losing sight of the end-goal – for instance, on the closing medley of reels, the intelligent deployment of parallel slower counterpoint offsets the principal melody before the concluding home-stretch flourish. This, of course, is guaranteed to send your finger straight back to the repeat-play button – in my case, it was for the whole disc! To be sure, Fidil’s Decade is an exceptional album stacked high with spellbinding playing. It represents another artistic triumph for the honourable Raelach imprint – and the package design and photography is most attractive too.