review

Record Review: Bert Jansch “A Man I’d Rather Be”

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Part 2 of the Bert Jansch reissue, A Man I’d Rather Be from Earth Recordings covers four albums and a journey across 6 years, that takes Bert from style to style and from strength to strength.

By Richard Hollingum for FRUK

As with Part 1 [review], (A Man I’d Rather Be from Earth Recordings) is released as a four-album bookset that pulls us through the late sixties and into the early seventies. At the start of this period, Bert is already part of Pentangle, which got together in 1967. In 1968 they had two hit albums – The Pentangle and Sweet Child and in 1970 they released Basket of Light. The success of the band over this period can be put down to the imaginative mix of the members, bringing jazz and folk idioms together with rock and early music.

For many music styles, especially those under the broad umbrella of popular music, this was a period about trying out different things, of experimentation. There were very few pigeon holes within which people would be pushed, musically speaking. A great era of inventiveness and trial, and a lot of it driven by musicians brought up in at least one of the more ‘traditional’ styles of folk, jazz or blues. Bert Jansch is at the heart of this, working with the others to find new sounds, new ways, reinterpreting traditional songs, merging styles.

The four albums on Part 2 are Nicola (1967), Birthday Blues (1969), Rosemary Lane (1971) and Moonshine(1973), and do offer a journey across the 6 years, that takes Bert from style to style and from strength to strength. The first of this quartet, Nicola, has been described as the ‘pop’ album but there is way more variety than one might think. The title track is a pleasant guitar piece with bass strings, drums and flute, starting out as an early music piece, sliding into jazz until the last 30 seconds when it stops and returns to the main theme. Life Depends On Love has the archetypal strings that for me are an almost turn off – but then one track out of four albums has to be forgiven – and anyway it is mercifully short at 1:48. Going to the other extreme, the highlight is Go Your Way My Love, which I think was the first track of Bert’s I was introduced to in those dimly distant days. The guitar technique is very evident – bright, energetic – and his voice most suited to this style.

Birthday Blues thankfully shuns some of the excesses of that era’s pop and explores a more diverse sound, typified by A Woman Like You bringing the sort of rhythms one would associate with Pentangle, particularly on this track with Terry Cox’s drums. One would not be surprised to learn that most of Pentangle appear on this album at various times.

Rosemary Lane is a return to a simpler more folky sound. I suppose the two stand-out tracks would be Rosemary Lane and Reynardine, the latter popping up on most Jansch compilations. These two tracks would have given the 1971 listener some pleasure in their length as well, running to 4:00 and 5:19 respectively. When we reach Moonshine, Pentangle has fallen apart and Bert has a clear run ahead. The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face, the Ewan MacColl song, was first recorded by Bert on Jack Orion (1966) but only as an instrumental.  On this later, vocal version, we can hear a more gentle style. Even the strings on his guitar don’t get the punishment he dealt out seven years earlier. The background vocals on this track are by Mary Hopkin and the fiddle is that of Aly Bain.

For me, this set of four albums very much coincides with my point of entry into Bert’s music and therefore I may be a tad biased if I say that this is as good a run of albums as you could find. It is also a very interesting set as they cover this period where he was both developing as a solo performer and also as part of a highly successful group. It is now very clear to see the influence that Pentangle had on him. One cannot expect there not to be any influence, but I suppose the question is, has what has been absorbed sent him the right way? Bit of a stupid question really, given that he was still performing months before his death in 2011 – and his music still sells. So, yes, he turned out okay despite being in Pentangle, but then that was no bad thing either.

For the majority who know Bert’s music, here is a good chance to prepare for what I am sure will be a lively discussion entitled “When was Bert Jansch’s best period?” For those of you that don’t know his music (really?), I don’t think you would find a better starting point. For me, I’m very grateful to Earth Recordings for this reminder of those daze….

Source: Bert Jansch: A Man I’d rather be (Part 2) | FRUK

Detectorists finale was “One of the most satisfying conclusions ever”

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By Mark Braxton

There is so much love for Detectorists. On any day of the week, just type in its hashtag and you’ll find posts like “one of the finest shows ever written”, “the antidote to Trump, Brexit and reality TV” and “please don’t let it be the last series”. Sherlock actor Amanda Abbington is among its famous fans, calling it “glorious television comedy at its best”.

 In three short seasons plus a Christmas special, Mackenzie Crook’s sylvan sitcom has created a buzz among viewers wanting a remedy to hateful times. Ostensibly it’s about two nerdy, 40-something men indulging their metal-detecting hobby while real life is passing them by.

And yes, this Poundland Time Team is searching for gold, but dig below the surface and it’s about so much more: history, conservation, love, family, friendship, the quiet achievements of ordinary people… these are the treasures of life, not material things

It’s a breath of invigorating, unpolluted air and one that makes a sunny virtue of its rural settings (Framlingham in Suffolk masquerading as the fields of Essex). It’s naturalistic, quirkily funny and sometimes memorably sad. Continue reading →

Record Review: The A. Lords

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Our Song of the Day [that day being August 10, 2014 – Hobbledehoy] is a beautiful unreleased improv from what would have been the second album from The A. Lords. Like their first album released in July 2011 on Rif Mountain, which sold out soon after, each track ‘was a very slow and deliberate paean to the oft maligned (and rightly so) fields of Dorset.’ This is so tranquil & serene.

By Folk Radio UK

The A. Lords was a project started by Nicholas Palmer and Michael Tanner. Nicholas is better known for making short elaborate instrumental music as Directorsound and Michael has a history of making longer, gloomier pieces as Plinth. The A. Lords peversely straddle the two, looking down at us with an expression of woe. Although their eponymous debut was released in 2011 the recordings that featured go back several years prior.

If you’ve yet to experience The A. Lords then you should hunt it out, it’s available via bandcamp here.

Source: The A. Lords – Improv, Dorset 2011 (unreleased)

Lankum review – eerie, overwhelming radical Irish folk already feels centuries old

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The Mercury-nominated four-piece play every song as if they’re fighting with it, gasping for air before verses

By Katie Hawthorne

A menacing rumble fills the Queen’s Hall. Four empty chairs line the front of the stage, crowded by instruments: fiddles, guitars, hand organs, pipes, pedals, a harmonium. Slowly, the rumble builds into a fidgety clatter, as if a ghostly orchestra is preparing to play, and Lankum walk on stage, their first notes bleeding into the din.

Such eerie theatre is a fitting introduction to the Dublin folk band, who turn traditional songs into fresh horrors and write stormy, gothic elegies to modern life which already feel centuries old. Their latest album, the Mercury prize-nominated False Lankum, is bound together by similarly haunted atmospherics, and yet it still feels a surprise when the band – Radie Peat, Cormac Mac Diarmada and brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch – pull their first song proper out of this mist.

They have a ferocious physicality to their musicianship, and although Daragh describes new (old) song The New York Trader as a “workout, every time”, just moments later he is hunched over his guitar with a violin bow, sawing as if cutting a thick rope. The Rocky Road to Dublin is sung with such intensity that the band collectively gasps for air before each verse, both meditative and ominous. The weather worsens further for The Pride of Petravore: pipes roar and Mac Diarmada’s fiddle turns into a horrifying groan.

Then, as if the evening has been breezy entertainment until now, Peat offers a blunt warning: “We wrote this one during level-five lockdown. Probably why it’s so intense.” Go Dig My Grave is the showstopper of False Lankum, a bone-crunchingly heavy ballad about love and death. Peat’s astonishing voice cuts through the dark, and the song builds around her: four-piece harmonies, guitar strummed like a funeral march, and a doom-laden siren with the circular swing of a lighthouse’s beam.

“We always sing, even when we’re losing,” goes their first single Cold Old Fire. This mix of grief and joy is why some songs live so long, and to close the night Lankum offers the latter: a rowdy version of Bear Creek has the audience whooping and stamping in cleansing release.

Source: Lankum review – eerie, overwhelming radical Irish folk already feels centuries old

Review: The Unthanks’ “Sorrows Away” 

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After assorted diversions, the sibling duo and co release a straight-up album of traditional songs and self-written work

The Tyneside group have secured an enviable position among British folk acts: beloved of the faithful but recognisable to casual listeners. Much is in part down to the distinctive sibling harmonies of sisters Rachel and Becky and to the Northumbrian tradition they champion, be it tales of Royal Navy press gangs or tributes to the region’s industrial past; here, for example, Rachel has an original song called The Isabella Colliery Coke Ovens. The group have played their hand cannily in other ways, bringing ambitious arrangements to their work – an outing with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra included – and exploring so-called “Diversions” – albums of songs of the shipyard, Robert Wyatt, Molly Drake; another with the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band – plus soundtracks for revamped children’s TV favourite Worzel Gummidge.

The Unthanks don’t falter on what is their first “proper” album in seven years, though the nine minutes of the Sandgate Dandling Song, a Victorian ballad about domestic violence, inclines to the ponderous. They are better when airborne, as on The Old News or Royal Blackbird, a Jacobite song given a lively violin arrangement. The much sung Waters of Tyne is an obvious standout, as is the title track, which has become an anthem on the group’s ongoing tour.

Source: The Unthanks: Sorrows Away review – from ponderous to airborne