Alasdair Roberts og Völvur – The Old Fabled River
Drag City – 23 July 2021
Alasdair Roberts is one of life’s natural collaborators: a preternaturally prolific and democratically-spirited contributor to dozens, if not hundreds of projects; he is also a formidable solo artist, songwriter, interpreter and guitarist. The last eighteen months have seen necessary changes to the way musicians work together, and Roberts took this as an opportunity to release two very personal solo albums. Fretted And Indebted was a beautifully stripped-back homage to his traditional influences, while The Songs Of My Boyhood saw him rework a selection of his old Appendix Out material.
The Old Fabled River is a very different proposition. For one thing, it was conceived and recorded just before the need for social distancing arose. A trip to Norway in 2019 – suggested by fiddler Hans Kjorstadt – saw Roberts join up with the Norwegian experimental folk collective Völvur to work on a selection of his own songs and traditional material. A year later, just before the first lockdown hit, Völvur travelled to the UK, bringing with them some of their own fresh material. A two-day recording session in Hackney resulted in this refreshing, bold and exploratory album.
Hearing it now and knowing what has gone on in the time since it was recorded, it is tempting to treat it as a relic of a better time, a final document of a music industry in which freedom of movement was unquestioned. And in a way, that’s comforting. But this isn’t a piece of nostalgia: the songs here are too experimental, too forward-thinking, to allow for that. The four Roberts originals are full of his typical combination of intelligence, otherworldliness and compassion, and all seem to point to changes in his personal life. Opener Hymn Of Welcome (after a stunning instrumental passage in which Kjorstadt’s fiddle gives way to Roberts’ fingerpicked guitar) engages with both death and birth, and particularly the intangible metaphysical flame that passes from the dying to the newly-born.
Orison Of Union is more light-hearted (though its references to ‘the rocking cradle and the open grave’ provide a direct thematic link to Hymn Of Welcome). It is a tender, gentle love song with a wordless chorus that shows Roberts at his most melodic. The Tender Hour explores similar ideas (simply put, the link between love and death) over an unhurried, minimal arrangement, while The Green Chapel uses Celtic mysticism to formulate a kind of philosophy of music. If that sounds dry and academic, Roberts’ wonderful turn of phrase and heartfelt singing makes sure it is anything but. It could almost have come from 2013’s A Wonder Working Stone, a cosmological masterpiece of an album.
The remaining four songs are all traditional – two sung in Norwegian and two in English – and it is here that the various members of Völvur begin to show their experimental and virtuosic sides. Marthe Lea, whose saxophone and clarinet provide an earthy underpinning to much of the album, takes up vocal duties on Nu Rinner Solen Opp and Nu Solen Går Ned, two linked songs about the rising and setting of the sun. The first is a lengthy, brightly detailed piece, pierced by raw plucks and screeches, that rests on droning strings and jazzy percussive rustles. The latter has a more minimal accompaniment, a hint of guitar followed by an impressionistic instrumental section in which the saxophone takes centre stage. A quiet wildness characterises Lea’s singing on both pieces.
Roberts sings both of the English-language traditional songs. Sweet William’s Ghost is a well-known ‘night-visiting’ song and one that Roberts himself had recorded previously, while his take on Robert Burns’ Song Composed In August is one of the album’s most quietly impressive moments. Roberts’ voice is accompanied only by the harmonies of Lea and Fredrik Rasten. It’s one of those songs that seems simple at first but reveals its complex intricacies on repeated listens until, at last, you become aware of a brilliantly woven web of voices. In fact, the whole album gives up its secrets in this way, slowly but openly: it is full of subtle mirrors, the dualism and continuity of life, pairs and opposites. This makes it a satisfyingly literary accomplishment, but it is also humane and wild and as vividly detailed as we’ve come to expect from anything Alasdair Roberts is involved in.
The Old Fabled River is released via Drag City on 23 July 2021
Order via Drag City | Bandcamp