Record Reviews

The Reykjavík Grapevine on Ólöf Arnalds’ latest

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Ólöf Arnalds — Tár í morgunsárið
Released September 23

The incredible and versatile artist Ólöf Arnalds has an emotionally-wrought new single out to announce her forthcoming album Spíra, out December 5. “Tár í morgunsárið” showcases the brilliancy and poignancy of Ólöf’s vocal talent, layered over a supple acoustic guitar arrangement. If the song’s opening seconds don’t send chills down your spine, I’m afraid you might be a robot. Go join your AI brethren in hating puppies or whatever you clanker people do. JB

Source: Grapevine New Music Picks: Gyða Valtýsdóttir, Ólöf Arnalds, Woolly Kind & More

Review: Lost Crowns’ “The Heart is in the Body”

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Six years in the making, Lost Crowns’ second album is a stunning feat of complex composition that takes their dark folk sound into bold new territory, finds Sean Kitching

By Sean Kitching

Following a pandemic-era Zoom call in which several traditional British folk musicians attempted to play together but fell out of sync, Lost Crowns main man Richard Larcombe was supposedly inspired to pick up instruments he’d never played before – fiddle, harp, tin whistle, concertina and English border bagpipe. The resulting recording stakes a serious claim to being the most exciting, most advanced music of its kind. The caveat being that there are few other artists who have even attempted to sound like this – and some listeners might well consider the entire enterprise a kind of monstrous folly to begin with.

 

The eight songs contained within this album are not entirely without precedent. One might consider Lost Crowns to be akin to a wilder Gentle Giant, had they been inspired by Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Conlon Nancarrow, instead of medieval and baroque chamber music. The work of the Henry Cow and Art Bears-inspired American Rock In Opposition groups Thinking Plague and 5uus are also obvious touchpoints, although Lost Crowns use of the darker kind of English folk exemplified by Comus, as well as a propensity for undeniably earworm-worthy riffs and vocal melodies, mark them apart from those bands. Undoubtedly, they will have crossover appeal for Cardiacs fans too, though it’s harder to draw any direct comparison there, with Tim Smith having always had an ear for a certain kind of psychedelic pop. This music will not be for everyone. Accusations of being wilfully difficult or overly composed are often fielded at such music (and are not entirely without foundation).

A friend who I played this to (whose work I am also very fond of) told me that he felt that the main problem with overly composed music is often “unmotivated dissonance” and opined that he’d rather have “a pretty melody grounded in a necessary harmony.” Certainly, there are such bands who would incline me to agree with this assessment, far more so than when considering Lost Crowns. There’s a fine line between originality and simply being wilfully awkward, but equally a ‘pretty melody’ will not be exactly the same for all sets of ears. There is too, the kind of ugly beauty exemplified by Troutmask Replica, which perhaps sidesteps the issue of being too academic in its construction by virtue of its radically ‘primitive’ compositional technique – an untrained composer creating on an unfamiliar instrument. Lost Crowns tread this fine line with aplomb, and the symphonically rendered chaos of their tightly scripted tunes transcends being simply intellectually interesting with a visceral dynamism usually absent from such complex music.

Three of the best tracks on The Heart is in the Body, ‘She Didn’t Want,’ ‘Et Tu Brute’ and ‘Did Look A Fool’, are almost insanely compelling and offer unique delights I’ve honestly yet to find elsewhere. That two of those tracks were among the earliest recorded for the album perhaps hints at a future problem of the band’s own making. After taking this sound as far as they have done on this release, one wonders where there is left for them to go next. Wherever that may be, put me down for a ticket.

Source: Lost Crowns – The Heart is in the Body | The Quietus

Davy Graham boxset celebrates one of the great British folk revivalists

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Davy Graham

By David Honigmann

Born in Leicestershire to a Scottish father and a Guyanan mother, Davy Graham became an eternal itinerant, moving between the folk clubs of London’s Soho and the shores of the Mediterranean. In his prime he was one of the British folk revival’s great innovators, broadening palettes and expanding minds. Cherry Tree’s eight-disc collection traces his influence — but also tracks his sad decline.

It opens with 1961’s “Angi”, Graham’s intricate folk-blues instrumental covered by everyone from Bert Jansch to Paul Simon. Two years later he would release his debut studio album, The Guitar Player, a set of instrumental blues and jazz covers that made “Angi”’s originality sound like a flash in the pan. His second record, Folk, Blues And Beyond, with its mixture of traditional folk and Middle Eastern influences, is much better, save for a low-energy “Cocaine” and an ill-advised “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”.

Graham’s 1965 composition “Maajun (A Taste Of Tangier)” charts a future direction ready to be explored by British folk musicians; “Sally Free And Easy”, “Black Is The Colour Of My True Love’s Hair” and “Seven Gypsies” see him essentially inventing Pentangle a couple of years early.The masterpiece here is Folk Roots, New Routes, his 1964 collaboration with Shirley Collins. Neither have ever been better. Collins had already recorded “Hares On The Mountain” on her 1959 debut, Sweet England, accompanying herself on the banjo, but here Graham’s guitar makes the song extraordinary: it flirts and struts, and then as Collins’s incantations become weirder he opens up space for her. Readings of “Reynardine” and “Pretty Saro” make full use of his new modal tunings.

After that, heroin and poor choices take their toll: boiled-down ragas are great, as is a fidgety, ebullient “Both Sides Now”, but his jazz covers never match the bebop masters he copies, and there is too much Lennon-McCartney. The last two albums here, recorded with his wife Holly, are fine, but by the end of the 1960s Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Trees and countless others are forging ahead on the trail he once blazed.

★★★★☆

‘He Moved Through The Fair: The Complete 1960s Recordings’ is released by Cherry Tree

Source: Davy Graham boxset celebrates one of the great British folk revivalists — review

The Arts Fuse Review: The “Horror” of the Mekons

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Mekons

The apocalyptic overtones of the Mekons’ music come across as alarmingly real as ever.

By Steve Erickson

The Mekons had the rare privilege of being able to debut twice. The first time came in 1978, with their singles “Where Were You?” and “Never Been in a Riot.” They’re among the highlights of that era’s post-punk outburst, but the two albums that followed them pleased no one. The band temporarily broke up but, in 1985, after they had fallen off everyone’s radar, the Mekons dropped Fear and Whiskey. The spirits of Hank Williams and Gram Parsons were yanked out of their graves and made to witness Thatcher’s England. In parallel to the Pogues’ music of the same era, the recording infused a punk sensibility into roots music. Whereas Shane MacGowan drew on his own Irish heritage, the Mekons turned to American country and folk music to fashion a voice that would speak about life in a dying empire. Several more classic albums followed: The Edge of the World, Rock’n’Roll, The Curse of the Mekons. Those achievements explain why interest in the band persists, decades after they started out.

The band members were in their late 20s around the time Fear and Whiskey and The Edge of the World were released, and they already sounded tired and weary. Song titles like “Hello Cruel World” and “Hard to Be Human” tell the story. The performers never presented themselves as stars speaking down to  their audience. Listening to their music makes one feel the band is traveling down the same road as their fans. Their struggles with the recording industry have only enhanced this empathy. Selling 25,000 copies, the Mekons’s A&M debut Rock’n’Roll was dismissed by the label as a flop, despite the fact it earned ecstatic reviews. The band could not even find an American label to release their next album The Curse of the Mekons. Only the Chicago-based indie Quarterstick finally offered them the necessary stability and support.

Drummer Steve Goulding told me “no one has ever made a living from the Mekons.” They weren’t too concerned with commercial success: suspicious of A&M, they deliberately left what would have been the most obvious single, “Heaven and Back”, off of the U.S. edition of Rock’N’Roll. There’s no explanation for why they couldn’t have generated as big a fan base as the Pogues or even the Clash (London Calling), except that the Mekons always undercut their most accessible tendencies. “Memphis, Egypt” is an exciting, anthemic rock song that also doubles as a Marxist critique of popular music as a capitalist product. Working with a major label required unhappy compromises, such as editing out the line “this song promotes homosexuality” from their music video “Empire of the Senseless” to receive airplay on MTV’s 120 Minutes.

The Mekons’ first album in five years, Horror takes on the roots of present-day political malaise fearlessly. Instead of just raging against the moment, they point out that we’ve been heading right where we are now for centuries: “400 years of stealing and killing, a giant Frankenstein.”  The song title “The Western Design” could not be blunter. Beginning  in the 1600s, as “John Dee, with his scrying mirror/necromanced the British empire,” lyrics look back at the roots of European imperialism in the Americas: “they couldn’t capture Hispaniola/so they went and found a harbor/the dawn of British empire.” With rhythm guitar strummed on the offbeat (as in reggae), the music situates this story of exploitation in the Caribbean.  “War Economy” picks up the story down the road, with a series of one-liners that tell colonizers to fuck off: “physical coercion will not achieve dominance.” “Mudcrawlers,” the album’s catchiest song, relates stories of starving Irish immigrants arriving in the U.S., with jangly guitar licks ironically mirroring their hopes.

Other songs are less directly political, though they still serve as elegies for a country and planet in decline. The ballad “Fallen Leaves” aches as “the dry earth cracks and shadows grow, a dying sun sinks down.” (Its music video depicts two band members as an elderly couple, suggesting the tune may reflect the performers’ feeling about aging.) “You’re Not Singing Anymore” and “A Horse Has Escaped” continue the album’s mix of the personal and political. The latter ponders “were we ever happy or were we never happy?…the ship is sinking, and a horse has escaped.”

Out of the Mekons’ entire discography, Horror lands closest to 1988’s So Good It Hurts, its scrambling of genres undergirding political iconoclasm. Their music’s apocalyptic overtones come across as alarmingly real as ever. One of the Mekons’ enduring concerns has been that oppression makes people miserable. Their ‘80s music spoke out of the psychic toll of living with diminished hope for the arrival of political solutions. Horror takes on a more subdued tone. All but two members of their 8-piece lineup sing lead vocals. Because the singers are constantly switching, the album has a somewhat communal feel. It is as if Horror stares into the void and the band draws on its collective strength to find reasons to go on.

Steve Erickson writes about film and music for Gay City News, Slant Magazine, the Nashville Scene, Trouser Press, and other outlets. He also produces electronic music under the tag callinamagician. His latest album, Bells and Whistles, was released in January 2024, and is available to stream here.

Source: Album Review: The “Horror” of the Mekons – The Arts Fuse