Nick Hart – Ten English Folk Songs
Roebuck Records – 29 April 2022
While there may be a logical progression to the titles of Nick Hart’s albums, there is a difference between this collection and its predecessors. The quintessential English folk songs presented on Nick Hart Sings Nine English Folk Songs and …Eight English Folk Songs were delivered in his unique stripped-back style, while on this latest offering, his songs are accompanied by a surprisingly wide variety of instruments, including some homemade ones, and some impressively alluring multi-layered arrangements.
You may not be surprised to learn that there are many May Songs in English Folk Music, and it is May Song, one of three carols on this release, that opens the album. There are untold variants in existence of May Song, although this one comes from Fowlmere in Cambridgeshire, where Nick’s father was born, and it has a gentle rhythm that is nonetheless emphatic enough to want to join in.
The other carols are Dives and Lazarus and Under The Leaves of Life. Nick’s version of Dives and Lazarus has what I can only describe as a piece of tremendous Tudor-meets-African music thanks to the emphatic beat, the whistles and a homemade lyre fashioned from an old banjo and table legs. In contrast, Under the Leaves of Life has a simple arrangement; it is soft and gentle, intimate and close, befitting the subject.
If you have heard Nick’s previous recordings and read the liner notes of those albums, you will know how much he admires the singers who came before him. They include Sam Larner, who sang the Child ballad Henry Martin featured here, and Walter Pardon, both from Norfolk. It is Walter Pardon’s version of Jack Hall that Nick apparently made various arrangements of, though none of them came up to scratch, and so we hear a compelling and straightforward voice and guitar combination that is perhaps appropriate for a gallows confession.
Two viols with a clarinet open the haunting and tragic story of Lucy Wan. This very old style of dialogue song, between a son and his mother, concerns the son killing his sister as she is carrying his child. Couched in metaphor in some versions, this theme has been accepted by both Cecil Sharp and AL Lloyd and demands an appropriate presentation. In this version, the clarinet follows the sung lines and then offers an interlude for the words to take root and provide a break. The arrangement is delicate and poignant, with lots of space. As with May Song, this version also came from Cambridgeshire. Ella Bull collected the song from Charlotte Dann of Cottenham – a village I relatively recently learned, where my paternal grandmother grew up with her 12 siblings.
Our Captain Calls is one of many songs with many interpretations depending on the words used. The version sung by Nick comes from Tom Willets and is close to that of George ‘Pop’ Maynard, a fine album finale. The well-known tune, used by Vaughan Williams for John Bunyan’s hymn To Be A Pilgrim, is simply given and draws a wry smile at the end as Holst’s I Vow To Thee My Country bleeds in, a connection pointing up the relationship between Holst and Vaughan Williams, and the connection between going off to fight someone’s war and promising to defend our country.
Ten English Folk Songs is another excellent set from Nick Hart. The original and exciting arrangements and instrumentations are delicate and balanced. Taken together with Nick’s distinctive voice, he has carried these folk songs on into the current time, giving them new life and extending their long history.
Nick Hart Sings Ten English Folk Songs is released on the 29th of April on Roebuck Records via Proper Music Distribution. Catalogue number: RRCD003. Formats: CD/digital download/stream.
Pre-order here: https://nickhart.lnk.to/TenEnglishFolkSongs
https://www.nickhartmusic.com/