No Face Music 18

Dave Evans - The Words In Between, album review

Then and Now

Enjoying this, first released in 1971 when I didn't know it but would have liked loads at the time. Just out again, and it is perfectly of its era in the singer-songwriter mode, with the bonus of Evens being a fine folk guitarist, and the touchstones are Bert Jansch and Pentangle, Insanity Rag as an example of versatile slide and finger-picking, and Magic Man in the BJ vein vocally, with Now is the Time reminding firmly of Pentangle. I know this seems to take away from Evans, but it would seem he was influenced rather than influencing, though this too can be a making [or not, so to speak] of its moment. Nostalgic then, but fresh in that these are original songs from Evans, and I am always happy to immerse by listening in this kind of past. Sounds of early John Martyn too, with Beverly in particular, but that nascent folk sound.

Bird Head Music 4

Burl Ives - Master Christmas

Traditional

As with my preceding post, I freely admit to being a sucker for Christmas music/albums/interpretations. This stretches from pop hits to Country to soulful [as with the Michael McDonald reviewed] to choral and other traditional variations.

I think this Burl Ives collection hits the spot for two main reasons, and we'll start with the musical: Ives was as well as a popular actor in the 50s and 60s, a folk singer, and it is this folk-vocal that informs these generally 'classic' Christmas songs, and by that I mean your Silent Night and Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, and perhaps lesser known but still 'Christian' song-melody The Seven Joys of Mary [parts 1 and 2] - it is a beautiful voice, a sweet crystal-clear tenor, and I love it.

The second reason is entirely nostalgic. Listening to Ives I am reminded, largely subconsciously, of my American childhood, of his appearance in films I cannot recall at all but visualise him in so clearly, and the voice which is so distinctive, both in terms of the quality I have described, but also my having heard it so often on the radio and TV of my midwestern upbringing.

Ives' folk roots are so clearly evidenced in the two songs I have just listened to, King Herod and the Cock and The Friendly Beasts.

No Face Music 17

Michael McDonald - Season Of Peace The Christmas Collection

Well-Wrapped

It's Michael McDonald.

It's Christmas songs.

Tin and statement.

I've always liked Christmas songs [traditional and consumerism savvy] if played at this time of year. I have stated many times that one of my favourite all-time songs - I confess I have many in this generic category - is James Taylor's funky version of Jingle Bells.

This is an absolutely predictable soulful set of mainly interpretations, not new and compiled over a number of seasonal releases by the MM.

There are the upbeat jazzy and soul-infused versions like White Christmas Winter Wonderland with Jonny Lang on guitar, and two more traditional examples God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen which I rather like for its smooth and Christmas-sassy interpretation, and Wexford Carol with Amy Holland on accompanying/harmonising vocal.

Like AdBlock, unpause your bah-humbug tendencies and let the Michael swathe you in undemanding but well-wrapped festive presentations.

Eye Music 33

Allison Crowe and Band - Welcome to Us 1 and 2, album reviews

A Rousing Welcome

The folk home of Allison Crowe’s music on Welcome to Us 1 is a comfortable, warming habitat. Inside, as Hours opens the doors, an accordion plays that particular genre palette, and Crowe’s vocal paints her first of many vibrant and vibrating colours. As a live recording, Crowe’s chats to and with the audience are so full of enthusiasm and a warming sense of genuine modesty. There is no need for a fire around this humble hearth.

The next Juliana puts that vocal vibrato to the fore and it is on this performance an uplifting instrument. The slight dissonance in instrumental bent notes and the emotive dirge of the cello add to the brooding tone. The quintet of musicians on this and whole album are Allison Crowe (vocals, piano, guitar, fiddle, bodhran), Céline Sawchuk (cello, vocals), Sarah White (mandolin, guitar, vocals), Dave Baird (bass, vocals) & Keelan Purchase (accordion, 12-string guitar, bodhran, harmonica, vocals). A vocal chant/narration he kept her down sets a further haunt behind the beauty of Crowe’s singing on this song about an intentional drowning.

Recorded ‘on the lovely isle of Newfoundland’, the folk inclination is seafaring and contemporary terrestrial. It is often quite raw, as stated also on the album Bandcamp page, and by this it is in the natural, unadorned playing. There is a sense of the Bohemian in the song Silence, a slow polka with, again, those bending string notes and the accordion’s pump and puff, Crowe crystalline in her vocal role. I like this dip and sway and swagger.

A choric ensemble sweetens Verses, a narrative that leads to and breaks out in Morrison’s Jig; Crowe enthuses about the many Newfoundland songs learned and played as the intro to Tarry Trousers which is then delivered in a sublime vocal folk gem; Wedding Song once more places Crowe’s strong lead within the frame of sweet harmonising [beautiful again here], and there is another jig in the wonderfully named Gerald Thomas’ Burnt Potato.

Welcome to Us 2 is the second part of the whole performance, and it is just as fine. But opener I Might sets a jazzier tone, and Céline Sawchuk on plucked cello helps to spread the sassier ambience. As with the previous album, all songs are linked either by Crowe’s chats/narrative, or as here, segues to the next so Shifts of Light/Tones in Translation follows with a return to the folk tropes – living with water as a metaphor for learning and surviving, Crowe using tonal shifts to accentuate the emotion. That sentiment is conveyed through the next immediate segue to I Am the Air, and when we arrive at Lisa’s Song it is an emotive journey.

So the album is unified by the ‘rawness’ [really a relative term] of performance which is excellent, by Crowe’s varying links, including that natural ebullience, by the strong sense of strings and accordion [not ignoring the other] which establish the folksiness but also the often brooding tones, and of course Crowe’s vocal signature. This leads to what is a rightly well-known personal cover from Crowe of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah which I think sits here perhaps better than wherever I have heard it before as a recoding [all good!] because so much has set the tone for this – and maybe it has been my current reading too of Cohen’s The Flame.

There is much more here and across both discs, but I trust this conveys a faithful sense of a whole work informed by honest endeavour and considerable musical beauty. When you buy, you still have the prettiness and jauntiness of Rare Birds to enjoy, the singalong of Now I’m 64, more vocal accompaniment on penultimate Bird Set Free, and then the rousing close of the Suite.

WtoU1 here.

WtoU2 here.

No Face Music 16

Trent Halliday - Paper Lights, album review

Tuck In

I first came across multi-instrumentalist Trent Halliday in his Three Days Dark alias and the album Somewhere a Band Plays reviewed here. If you read you’ll see how much I enjoyed, so it is obviously of interest to hear this mainly instrumental release, not least when Halliday refers to his influences as Terry Riley and Steve Reich, the former a firm favourite [well, many would state that] and hearing loops and repetitions in this album’s opener Rainmaker where the personal nuance is having these recurring from a played acoustic guitar, a touch to the basics I also like. This is expanded on the second track Standing on the Back of a Whale where guitar again provides a foundation, and an ‘odd’ instrument [a mini digital accordion, or similar?] that sets a very specific kind of minimalism, that is until the track makes its inherent expansion into a choric fill. There are ‘Spanish’ influences here too, it seems to me, in the rhythms and ‘handclaps’, an eerie fireworks background-of-sound – the danger perhaps in trying too hard to name rather than just listen. The repetition in this is a hypnotic, climatic drive to the end.

As well as individual artists who have inspired Halliday [and a reference to Sufjan Stevens informs the work of Three Days Dark] he also describes how ‘the album is minimalist inspired, cinematic, orchestral-folk, with lots of acoustic instrumentation and some electronic touches’. It is also playful, I think, in the way for example The Animal Orchestra is carnival-esque, with Folklore Radical taking a further tangent to a more percussive sound but within this a cowboy-esque sense of pace – I can’t explain further though I see here the cinematic equivalent of a horse racing across a prairie [?] though this then suddenly opens out into Riley territory at its close.

Then Constellation returns us to the acoustic guitar as the prime instrument, flamingo influences performed in the clear expertise of Halliday’s playing – this too seguing to its electronic phase where the guitar and the light percussive backdrop are lopped onwards, and then returns to the acoustic core. I think this amalgam of live playing and ‘electrifying’ works well, and is picked up in the following guitar-driven title track [with sweet vocal chorus] Paper Lights.

There are further ranges and ranging, all patterned to repeating as a key methodology. For those more inclined to the wholly electronic, penultimate Shallows provides this flavouring in the overall signature recipe.

Paper Lights is a full musical meal to be savoured. You can get it here.

Into the Distance Music 84