As part of Topic Records’ 85th anniversary, June Tabor & Oysterband‘s 2011 album ‘Ragged Kingdom‘ will be reissued. The limited edition crimson vinyl reissue also coincides with the announcement of ‘A Long Long Goodbye’ tour, which officially marks Oysterband’s retirement from live performance. June Tabor joins the band for eight special UK dates this October (dates below – the tour officially wraps up in Germany next March).
From the opening, Ragged Kingdom leaps from speakers, as noted by Neil McFadyen in his KLOF Mag review: “Bonny Bunch Of Roses gallops from the speakers like a messenger from the battlefield, giving us the first hint of the vocal explorations and engaging arrangements on offer. But before we get too comfortable, we’re immediately taken in a startling change of direction.
In PJ Harvey’s That Was My Veil, an emphatic bass drum and jangly acoustic guitar provide a darker note. June Tabor’s vocal sweeps headlong towards a far less controlled and exact style than what we’re used to. It’s a revelation and a joy, I’m already hoping to hear more of this June Tabor I’ve never heard before, as she warms to the role of folk rock Goddess.”
Following the album review, Dave Freak interviewed the Oysterband about the making of Ragged Kingdom, opening with reference to their cover of Joy Division’s Love With Tear Us Apart:
For many, Joy Division’s masterful swansong, Love With Tear Us Apart, is sacrosanct. Untouchable. It’s a song dozens have tried to interpret – from ’80s Smash Hits cover star Paul Young (woeful) to French bossa nova combo Nouvelle Vogue (slight). Even peers The Cure (lacking) and Simple Minds (tragic) have had a go.
Yet against this background of largely uninspired, misfiring and lacklustre interpretations, June Tabor and Oysterband have delved deep into the song to find something new, something unheard. In reinventing a post-punk powerhouse anthem, they’ve done the impossible … and somehow made it their own.
“It was a song we’d wanted to do for some time,” explains Oysterband’s John Jones of the Ragged Kingdom album track. “There’s a thread of Oysterband listening that’s outside of its own evolution, that’s into Tom Verlaine and Television, the Velvet Underground, a dark, hard, driven music that we’d also heard in Joy Division. We don’t play that music [live] but we like it. Just as we recorded Love Vigilantes by New Order, you hear something … something beautiful, bittersweet.”
Reimagining the song as a gentle, acoustic duet between John and June, it’s a tearful ballad.
“When we looked at Love With Tear Us Part’s lyrics, we saw this other song. It took two or three years to say ‘right’ and another two or three years to nail it. We stripped it down to the bare minimum, and it’s so intense. It’s like listening to people’s thoughts about a relationship … you hear every thought and June’s every breath in the song.
“If you’re going to do a cover, you have to be different to the original version.”
The song is one of several highlights from an album which few saw coming. Back in the early ’90s, Freedom And Rain marked the first collaboration between Oysterband – who’d risen from their Ceilidh Band roots two decades earlier to become one of the UK’s biggest folk acts – and equally respected singer June Tabor. Featuring cover versions of tracks by Shane MacGowen, Billy Bragg, Richard Thompson and the Velvet Underground, it proved to be a notable success.
Now, over 20 years later, a belated sequel finds the two artists sweeping the boards at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, as Ragged Kingdom (Topic Records) earns them Best Group, Best Album, Best Traditional Track (Bonny Bunch Of Roses) and Folk Singer Of The Year (June). And once again, it steps outside of the ‘traditional’ folk world for source material, selecting the aforementioned Joy Division classic alongside PJ Harvey and John Parish’s That Was My Veil, ‘60s soul standard The Dark End Of The Street and Bob Dylan’s Seven Curses.
“You can’t make this up,” says John of Ragged Kingdom’s unplanned and unforeseen success. “You leave something for so long and … you finally get together. Sure, we kept in touch and we knew June was in good voice. You have a difficult time finding songs, and the song selection is very very important. You throw ideas at each other. We just wanted to make a good album. What we got out of it – the awards, appearing on Later with Jools Holland – it doesn’t go that far when you’re making the record. It’s just a surprise… and you take it when it comes, but you can never predict it or expect it…”
To quote again from McFadyen’s album review: “June Tabor and Oysterband have provided far more than a heady mix of traditional ballads and contemporary songwriting. The album raises the spirit and tears at the soul in turn. It takes all the artists involved in new directions, each and every one of them revelling in the exploration of uncharted territory. The band have succeeded in creating something that, while instantly recognizable as June Tabor, fully representative of Oysterband, also becomes far more than the sum of its parts.”
Ragged Kingdom was recorded first at Rockfield Studios near Monmouth and then at Metway Studios, Brighton, with Oysters’ regular producer Al Scott, Feb to April 2011.
This reissue, released as part of Topic’s 85th-anniversary celebrations, also coincides with the announcement of the ‘A Long Long Goodbye’ tour, which officially marks Oysterband’s retirement from live performance. June Tabor joins the band for eight special UK dates this October (the tour officially wraps up in Germany next March).
A Long Long Goodbye Tour Dates
THU 3 OCT – BIRMINGHAM TOWN HALL
FRI 4 OCT – BRISTOL BEACON
SAT 5 OCT – BEXHILL DE LA WARR PAVILION
SAT 12 OCT – MANCHESTER RNCM CONCERT HALL (SOLD OUT) SUN 13 OCT – SUNDERLAND THE FIRE STATION
TUE 15 OCT – LEICESTER DE MONTFORT HALL
SAT 19 OCT – LONDON BARBICAN (SOLD OUT)
SUN 20 OCT – CANTERBURY FESTIVAL
Full information/dates here: https://alonglonggoodbye.live/
The album can be pre-ordered here: https://raggedkingdom.lnk.to/vinyl
