Janice Burns & Jon Doran
No more the Green Hills
Wylam Records
28 October 2022
Since starting to perform as a duo in 2017, Janice Burns and Jon Doran have achieved much to be proud of, including appearances at major festivals, including Edinburgh Tradfest, Sidmouth, and Cambridge, and winning a “Danny” at 2021’s Celtic Connections. The release of an EP in 2020 raised high expectations for their debut album, and No More the Green Hills fulfils all of them and more. At the heart of their music lies a gentleness and a deceptive simplicity, generating songs with a sound that wraps around you like a warm blanket, though some have lyrics disturbing enough to disrupt that idyll.
They met whilst studying on the folk and traditional music course at Newcastle University, drawn into performing together through a shared passion for traditional songs. With Janice hailing from Glasgow and Jon from Gloucestershire, they were already familiar with two strong traditions from which to draw material but, as No More the Green Hills shows, they’ve subsequently cast their net wider, incorporating Irish and North American sources. As you might expect from musicians in their early twenties, they don’t approach traditional songs as if they were precious museum pieces, but equally, their arrangements are as far removed from twenty-first-century folk-rock as you could imagine. First and foremost, these are songs with a story to tell, and the clarity of Janice and Jon’s individual voices ensures, first and foremost, those stories are heard. Add the harmonies achieved from the pairing of their voices, and the listener is transported to vocal heaven.
Whilst the vocals may take centre stage, the instrumental arrangements are equally well-matched to the songs. Between the two of them, they play mandolin, tenor guitar, harmonium, piano, acoustic guitar, bouzouki and fiddle. With all those instruments available, they’ve only needed to call in one guest, Ben Nicholls, adding double bass on three tracks. One of these is the album’s opener, False True Love, the song introducing a topic that runs through the album, lost love and the accompanying loneliness, sometimes despair. Their arrangement is immediately impressive, with spine-tingling harmonies and accompaniment that is mainly an interplay between guitar and mandolin. With the brief sleeve notes that accompany each track, they explain aspects of how each song came into their repertoire. With False True Love, it was something of an academic endeavour, consulting the Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles book, “English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians Vol.2”. The book contains several versions of the song from which they’ve collated their favourite words and melodies, creating a version that is uniquely their own.
Lost love is also at the heart of the next song, She Moved Through the Fair, performed with elegant simplicity, little embellishment is needed as their voices gently harmonise over picked guitar. In contrast with the research needed to develop their take on the previous song, the sleeve notes here explain this interpretation is based on the singing of Irish traveller and street singer Margaret Barry. With that pedigree, it’s no surprise they’ve given us a version entirely worthy of the song.
After a detour to the more political side of folk song with Four Loom Weaver, a version inspired by a Ewan MacColl recording, the focus returns to lost loves. As I Roved Out adds regret to the emotional content as a soldier rues the choice he made, marrying for money, not love. The song gives us an opportunity to appreciate Jon’s voice as he takes several sections solo, and a tremendous voice it is too. Their notes on this song end by emphasising the trio of emotions it evoked when they first heard it sung by Paddy Tunney, “love, loss and regret”. The album’s next track, The Corncrake, might seem to lose this focus, but in reality, it merely alters the target. It is one of four songs, the others being The Greenmore Hare, Up and Awa’ and The Black Fox that are concerned not with the ups and downs of romantic love but with our changing relationships with life in the countryside. Up and Awa’ and The Black Fox are not traditional, credit for the lyrics are given to Andy Hunter and Graham Pratt, respectively. Andy Hunter set his lyrics to the pipe tune Jig O’Slurs from Pipe Major G. S. MacLennan. The messages to be taken from all four songs are somewhat oblique, in part, they are describing and could be thought to be celebrating, hunting and fishing. But the sleeve notes make it clear, the singers are highlighting lives lived in harmony with nature, and a major concern is the loss of access to the land that, in the past, has encouraged such harmony. So, maybe, we can add a further emotion, anger, to our list. In one respect, at least, the emotions attached to these unwelcome changes in the countryside trump those attached to personal relationships, giving the album its title.
No More the Green Hills was recorded at Watercolour Studios, overseen by sought-after producer Andy Bell and mixed by him at Hudson Studio. The Watercolour studios’ setting at Ardgour, on the less readily accessible western side of Loch Linnhe, will certainly have enhanced feelings of harmony with the wilder side of country life. As for the emotions associated with lost love, I imagine the songs themselves were the only inspiration Janice and Jon required to produce these masterful, unforgettable arrangements. Anyone who fancies themselves as a singer of traditional songs will likely want to sing these songs, but beware, few will have the voices, musicianship or imagination to pull it off at this level.
No More Green Hills is out on 28 October 2022.
Pre-Order via Bandcamp (CD/Digital): https://janandjon.bandcamp.com/album/no-more-the-green-hills
Janice & Jon are head out on tour this month. Full details can be found here: https://www.janandjon.com/live