A CURIOUS MIX OF BRITISH FOLK MUSIC AND AMERICAN POLITICS
The story behind England’s favourite hymn
During William Blake’s life, only two copies of words to what has now become England’s unofficial anthem were printed. Blake scholars Prof. Jason Whittaker and Dr. Linda Freedman explain what happened next.
Photo: A detail from the preface from William Blake’s epic poem Milton
In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth,
And all you behold, though it appears without,
It is within, in your imagination,
Of which this world of mortality is but a shadow.”
The Block Museum’s current exhibition, “William Blake and the Age of Aquarius,” is a study of time travel and tripping. It connects Blake’s ethereal radicalism to that of the 1960’s to that of the post-truth U.S., and in Chicago, Faith Wilding’s show at Western Exhibitions. [ . . .]
Continue Reading at: The feminist energies of William Blake and Faith Wilding take over Chicago – Chicago Tribune
Trembling Bells have never been concerned with keeping with the times. Instead of angsty modern themes, they deal with gigantic archetypal forms like love and death, their clattering folk rock writ large in primary colours of bold, crashing chord progressions and songs studded with references to mainstream poets like Dylan Thomas.
They’re anachronistic, but not in a shallow way. Far from the psychedelic folk revivalists they’re often portrayed as, they’re much more redolent of a classicist impulse informed by lead songwriter Alex Neilson’s love for Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, which has in the past made for some potently emotive, sky-punchingly romantic music. Their last album, 2015’s The Sovereign Self made gestures toward more conventionally progadelic moves and scaled back on the impassioned folk tonalities, and that approach still holds some sway over Dungeness. However, while they perhaps aren’t producing skyscraping bangers in the vein of ‘Goathland’ and ‘Willows of Carbeth’ at the rate they once were, this album claws back much of the wonkiness that initially made them so unique.
