 |
| Track list: 1. Roll the Woodpile Down - Bellowhead 2. The Farmer's Cursed Wife - Hannah James / Sam Sweeney 3. Tailor - Anaïs Mitchell 4. Unknown Air - Duncan Chisholm 5. Tha Sneach'd Air Druim Uachdair - Kathleen MacInnes 6. Doctor James - Katriona Gilmore & Jamie Roberts 7. Texas Girl's Lament at the Funeral of Her Father - Nic Jones 8. Hatchlings - Emily Portman 9. Mary - Rura 10. Small Coals - Kathryn Tickell Running time: 34 minutes Released: 2013 |
Yup, it is time for some more Folk Awards nominees. My retention rate on these is really low so far, maybe skipping 2012 (and 2009 and 2010) was a good idea. Hopefully 2013 will reverse the trend of mass culling established in 2008 and 2011. The first two tracks I have elsewhere and the others I know not at all.
Bellowhead are, to me, best when they concentrate on really tuneful numbers - tunes that employ their large and varied numbers to craft melody - and then use their sheer power to blow the roof off them. Whilst on balance I prefer their first couple of albums, this song is a good example - with the primary theme being nice and melodic but the emphatic chorus impressing the big band idea. I can see why this was a massive success as a single. This next tune made it onto my Albion playlist - when dealing with a magical view of the British Isles, stories about devils come to take people fit nicely in to the landscape. In truth I am not a huge fan of the song - I find James' singing less than enticing, but Sam Sweeney's playing goes some way to counter-balancing that. I can only hope that the album this came from is a little more accessible for me.
Those two past, I recognise a couple of the names of artists to come but none of the songs so it is a step into the unknown. I like the plucking on Tailor, but not the singing. I must admit to a degree of surprise finding an American artist on a British Folk Awards listing, but as her song progresses her style grows on me and I find myself enjoying it a lot. When the instruments pick up they are played with warmth, but the voice is left plenty of space to tell its tale. Pretty well constructed, then, Tailor cedes the stage to a fiddle lament which is piercing in its sorrow. Chisholm holds a real edge on some of the notes that make this a stirring and moving tune. If I close my eyes and concentrate on the strains I get goosebumps. There is magic in sadness; or maybe it is joy - I am famously bad at this... one of my favourite Spiers & Boden tracks, Union, was written for a wedding yet always sounds sorrowful to me. In the end it does not matter which emotion is raised, for the mere fact that it raises one strong enough that it being "off" matters is itself indicative of praise.
I am then treated to a Gaelic number. I have a number of tunes sung by different Gaelic singers, and I love the alienness of the language to my ear. Yet only Julie Fowlis has really captured my heart with her singing, and that holds after this - which is nice but no more than that. It is short, and over before I realise, replaced by a tune that I cannot help but conflate in my head with Doctor Jones by Aqua. That really is an unfortunate similarity of title and no more, but the two songs do share something else: they do nothing for me. This one is not offensively bad in the way I found that Danish (?) pop act to be, but it is very bland and feels like it is straight out of generic TV western soundtrack land, at least until near the end when there is a weird tonal shift before the final verse. It speaks of telling secrets; here is one: this song is no longer in my library.
Nic Jones is one of the names that I recognised, even if I have little else by him; I recall seeing him pick up an award (quite possibly in 2013) one year. I cannot really say I like this tune though, but at least it is short. Emily Portman appeared on a previous Folk Awards album and I think I even kept her offering as an interesting piece rather than one I liked a lot. The same might be true here; I was going to say "no thanks" but then the song went and mentioned the fae in the lyrics and now my hand is stayed. It is an interesting song but my problems with it are twofold: I am not keen on her voice and the banjo-like playing is a bit too plinky-plinky for my tastes (yeah - way to go on the description there, eh?). I might have to err on the side of getting rid. The next song makes me think of Admiral Fallow in terms of the singer's voice; I rather like the song though - it goes a little iffy in the chorus on occasion but is generally a fairly easy-going ballad.
The disc ends with a tune that I can only describe as odd. I cannot pick out the instrumentation as it opens; I thought some kind of squeezebox-pipes hybrid and it seems to be a shrunken set of bagpipes so I am not a million miles away. It is another short tune and in the time it took me to write that sentence and Google Kathryn Tickell it is over. I am left with silence, wondering just how I managed to get to it, and what to do with a surprisingly short collection of songs. I do not see many being kept again, but I might have to look up more from Anaïs Mitchell and Duncan Chisholm if their efforts were representative.
Bellowhead are, to me, best when they concentrate on really tuneful numbers - tunes that employ their large and varied numbers to craft melody - and then use their sheer power to blow the roof off them. Whilst on balance I prefer their first couple of albums, this song is a good example - with the primary theme being nice and melodic but the emphatic chorus impressing the big band idea. I can see why this was a massive success as a single. This next tune made it onto my Albion playlist - when dealing with a magical view of the British Isles, stories about devils come to take people fit nicely in to the landscape. In truth I am not a huge fan of the song - I find James' singing less than enticing, but Sam Sweeney's playing goes some way to counter-balancing that. I can only hope that the album this came from is a little more accessible for me.
Those two past, I recognise a couple of the names of artists to come but none of the songs so it is a step into the unknown. I like the plucking on Tailor, but not the singing. I must admit to a degree of surprise finding an American artist on a British Folk Awards listing, but as her song progresses her style grows on me and I find myself enjoying it a lot. When the instruments pick up they are played with warmth, but the voice is left plenty of space to tell its tale. Pretty well constructed, then, Tailor cedes the stage to a fiddle lament which is piercing in its sorrow. Chisholm holds a real edge on some of the notes that make this a stirring and moving tune. If I close my eyes and concentrate on the strains I get goosebumps. There is magic in sadness; or maybe it is joy - I am famously bad at this... one of my favourite Spiers & Boden tracks, Union, was written for a wedding yet always sounds sorrowful to me. In the end it does not matter which emotion is raised, for the mere fact that it raises one strong enough that it being "off" matters is itself indicative of praise.
I am then treated to a Gaelic number. I have a number of tunes sung by different Gaelic singers, and I love the alienness of the language to my ear. Yet only Julie Fowlis has really captured my heart with her singing, and that holds after this - which is nice but no more than that. It is short, and over before I realise, replaced by a tune that I cannot help but conflate in my head with Doctor Jones by Aqua. That really is an unfortunate similarity of title and no more, but the two songs do share something else: they do nothing for me. This one is not offensively bad in the way I found that Danish (?) pop act to be, but it is very bland and feels like it is straight out of generic TV western soundtrack land, at least until near the end when there is a weird tonal shift before the final verse. It speaks of telling secrets; here is one: this song is no longer in my library.
Nic Jones is one of the names that I recognised, even if I have little else by him; I recall seeing him pick up an award (quite possibly in 2013) one year. I cannot really say I like this tune though, but at least it is short. Emily Portman appeared on a previous Folk Awards album and I think I even kept her offering as an interesting piece rather than one I liked a lot. The same might be true here; I was going to say "no thanks" but then the song went and mentioned the fae in the lyrics and now my hand is stayed. It is an interesting song but my problems with it are twofold: I am not keen on her voice and the banjo-like playing is a bit too plinky-plinky for my tastes (yeah - way to go on the description there, eh?). I might have to err on the side of getting rid. The next song makes me think of Admiral Fallow in terms of the singer's voice; I rather like the song though - it goes a little iffy in the chorus on occasion but is generally a fairly easy-going ballad.
The disc ends with a tune that I can only describe as odd. I cannot pick out the instrumentation as it opens; I thought some kind of squeezebox-pipes hybrid and it seems to be a shrunken set of bagpipes so I am not a million miles away. It is another short tune and in the time it took me to write that sentence and Google Kathryn Tickell it is over. I am left with silence, wondering just how I managed to get to it, and what to do with a surprisingly short collection of songs. I do not see many being kept again, but I might have to look up more from Anaïs Mitchell and Duncan Chisholm if their efforts were representative.
No comments:
Post a Comment