Bending the Dark - The Imagined Village

Track list:

1. The Captain’s Apprentice
2. New York Trader
3. Wintersinging
4. The Guvna
5. Sick Old Man
6. Nest
7. Fisherman
8. Get Kalsi
9. Washing Song
10. Bending the Dark

Running time: 55 minutes
Released: 2012

The Imagined Village. I liked their first album a lot but then soured on them a bit. I have, however, stumbled across a very positive BBC Music review of this album in the process of preparing for this post so perhaps it is a good thing to be revisiting this again. To not influence any reading of this piece, I leave the link to the end.

I have been a bit quiet here of late - nothing for over a week. I may be back from my holidays but I have been tied up one way or another - busy evenings, a weekend with the niece and nephew, tiredness and, significantly, the cricket commentaries coming from the West Indies where England are playing. These have filled up the evenings when I have been around, and I can't listen to two things at once. I have other things on the go that I haven't got to in my evenings, too - for example i am now 2 sessions behind writing up my Albion game. I was going to address that yesterday until I got caught in an accident tailback (two, actually) and it took almost 3 hours to get home from work, normally 40 minutes away, and so I was not in a mood conducive to writing.

Enough grumbling, I have just about managed to find a window for this within 2 weeks of the last post so lets dive in. The opening is an unaccompanied female voice, Jacqui Oates, that I recognise as one of The Winterset backing Rachel Unthank on The Bairns; we then get percussion and eventually a top end joining in. When the vocal returns it is, instead, Eliza Carthy. This is one of the things that attracted me to The Imagined Village - the range of musicians involved. This line up is different from that on their debut; there is overlap but some have gone, some have arrived.

Of course Carthy's vocal is also a different track to Oates' and so, I presume, was the top end. I just missed the transition... rustiness showing immediately. It makes more sense this way, mind. New York Trader is quite a rich number, blending a lot of different influences - another plus from The Imagined Village concept and range of contributers - compared to the sparseness of the short opener.

Two and a bit tracks in now, and I am again reminded about how thin the lines between genre can be, and in places you may not expect. Here on Wintersinging the percussion is persistent and incessant in a manner not unlike something you might hear in a club, weighted by the bass of Ali Friend of Clayhill and more pertinently Red Snapper, who I have seen (on video alas) doing Drum 'n' Bass live with an upright bass. The difference is in the composition of the top end - what instruments are involved - and, crucially I think, the relative volumes of the parts. I really like this track, both as an example of the fragility of genre as a concept and more simply as a piece of music. I am already much better disposed to this album than I was expecting to be before reading up on it.

The Guvna is a disappointment as a follow up - I think it misses something from not having any vocal. I recall this track being called out in the BBC piece but I read that nearer 3 weeks ago and cannot recall why. I still worry that it is influencing my opinion, but the track is simply lacking engagement. It's not unpleasant or anything, just... bland? Thankfully a singer is reintroduced for the next track, which includes Raggle Taggle Gypsy, which I am more familiar with from The Waterboys. This track again features Friend's distinctive twangy bass, with which I am very familiar, the notes he leaves phrases on, the structures of his hooks here, could come straight from a Red Snapper record, which is a fine thing as far as I am concerned.

Tonal shift. A softer song, less bassy, percussion relegated to supporting role rather than dominant structure, and back to Oates as vocalist, albeit sharing some duties with Carthy and a male voice - which one of the candidates I can't pin down by ear. Nest is alright, but I am immediately drawn in to the dark tone of the following track, a sleazy but enticing schmooze with a rich arrangement that pairs really well with Carthy's signing. This feels less folk, more noir despite being titled Fisherman. I love it.

Its not as if I have been completely music free in the weeks intervening between this and posting Beat the Champ - but it feels good to give time to some music again, even as I simultaneously distract myself by typing and glancing every now and again at the silent snooker on the TV. I have not managed to immerse myself in listening to anything else in the interim. Even in yesterdays snore-fest of a drive home there was no music, TMS kept me entertained instead as the cricket is back on, and forms one reason why I am forcing myself to do this listen mid-morning, else it could be another half week before I get to anything.

I have found the more percussive numbers, the grungier less folky numbers more interesting on this disc but I do appreciate the wandering styles, and Washing Song being predominantly stripped back to Carthy, a keyboard and fiddle is a strong counter to some of the earlier sounds. As I head into the last track I can honestly say I have really enjoyed this listen, but I am concerned it might all be destroyed by stupid silence given the 12 minute length of the title track. Hopefully its actually all music all the way - seems quite likely with the way the piece has started - a sort of rolling amalgam of the various styles of the individual contributors, rather than a coherently directed effort. As I type that it drops into sparse wandering, which would be dull except it brings to mind summer days. When it starts to build again I find it less interesting, a return to the busy but flat sound that The Guvna brought.

I hear in there a melody that I recognised, but could not place. Checking liner notes, it references The Cuckoo's Nest which immediately makes sense. That phase passes and we enter some serious drumming. To be honest I find this a shambles. The best songs on this album were tightly crafted works, using the different influences and contributors but pulling in one direction. This closer is undirected which means that whilst different aspects of it are quite decent the overall impression is not strong.

So, a disappointing close, but overall a very worthwhile album with a few tracks I enjoyed immensely. That title track goes. The other disappointing ones... I think I need another time through, or perhaps to listen to them isolated from the pieces that were so much better.

The BBC review I mentioned is here, by the way.

The Bairns - Rachel Unthank & the Winterset

Track List:

1. Felton Lonnin
2. Lull I
3. Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk
4. I Wish
5. Blue's Gaen oot o' the Fashion
6. Lull II: My Lad's a Canny Lad
7. Blackbird
8. Lull III: A Minor Place
9. Sea Song
10. Whitethorn
11. Lull IV: Can't Stop It Raining
12. My Donald
13. Ma Bonny Lad
14. Fareweel Regality
15. Newcastle Lullaby

Running time: 65 minutes
Released: 2007

This was actually the Unthanks' second album, but the first that captured my attention. I am not sure whether it was before or after their Mercury nod that I picked it up or, if before what drove me to do so. My appreciation or otherwise of these northern songstresses waxes and wanes quite a bit. I have seen them perform and loved it, but I have also skipped through track after track without paying any attention at all. I am curious what forcing myself to listen to them will reveal in terms of engagement and enjoyment.

It is a slow start this, with the opening track taking time to get moving - and even then it is not the most urgent of tunes. Dialect rules here, very affected north eastern delivery but it is very clearly in dialect and not in accent - though the two are clearly related. There are long instrumental periods here, and the arrangement is a little too sparse to really support that. It has a slow movie soundtrack air about it in those segments, not the theme I would really expect to accompany a folk song about cows, so it does have some interest, but it drifts too long, unfocused, rather than giving a tight rendition. And then a "Lull" - one of four interludes. I have never understood why these need to appear on records, and especially not so close to the start, or so close together. To be fair, it is a much more engaging interlude than many, and at a minute and a half it has time to deliver something.

Blue Bleezing Blind Drunk is a song that I am primarily familiar with through James Yorkston, but it is good to hear it sung from the female perspective that its narrative conveys. The piano accompaniment is really nicely played here, soft and supportive, and the main theme is carried well. There is a decent acceleration and shift in gear for the arrangement as the song progresses, but the vocal loses something of its allure when the pace picks up. Overall I think I prefer Yorkston's recording but this is different enough to maintain both happily. I Wish is very nicely performed. My problem with it is the slow, drawn out performance - there is no energy to it, no demand to be paid attention to whatsoever. It gets weirder about two thirds through when frantically whispered lines appear over a fake-tension key line - it is just at odds with the delivery, and really the song would have been better shut down at that point.

Ah, a bit more rhythm and pace. A soft-sung harmony and a bright melody - there has not been enough of this. It slows down when it swells in volume but the injection of some tempo is welcome, and it returns outside of the chorus. I have to say I prefer my folk with a bit more punch. Faster, lighter, brighter, bolder. Laments have their place and can be wonderful but the main attraction of traditional music for me is the music that reflects the joy and community that spawned tunes, bound people together and so forth. Dance tunes, feel good music. The songs do not have to be happy but having life to them helps. Tenderness is great and all, but give it to us with a tune and a structure and some energy and I will be happier. Their rendition of Blackbird has enough of these pieces and it is a treasure.

It is also half as long as the majority of the other pieces, and I think that is my biggest disappointment with this disc thus far: the tunes are spun out, worn thin by the end. The songs are always nicely sung, and well played, but several are performed so sedately that nodding off is a real danger, and the next one does not start soon enough to jolt you out of that sedation. That some, like Sea Song, meander to their ends, disappearing with a whimper, exacerbates this. The disc clocks in at 65 minutes; had the songs been arranged with the urgency to bring it in at 45 it could have been wonderful. Of course, it would not then have the hallmarks that make the Unthanks stand out - bold vocals with arrangement to support them and a slow deliberate delivery that really does let their voices stand out.

I am conflicted in how I feel about this one, perhaps more so than with any of the albums I have been through yet. I think that, as I wrote in the opening paragraph here, the Unthanks are very variable in appreciation - and I have little doubt that this style is much more effective for a live audience where it is easier to get drawn into the performance (which is ever impressive) rather than becoming concerned with the shortfalls of the construction as I am here. I find there are little sections or passages here that I love - there is an instrumental bridge in My Donald that is strikingly lovely, for instance, lost in the midst of 8 minutes of wandering - but overall I am not really feeling this as an album to listen to other than in an audience were they to play it all live.

There are some fine songs here - Blackbird, of course, but also Fareweel Regality where the rise and fall of the vocal through the chorus is softly lilting magic. Alas the presentation as a whole does not, I feel, support them well. I wish the beauty of the individual performances - singers and musicians - on the album were better combined into a greater whole but unfortunately the worth of The Bairns is, I would say, significantly less than the sum of its parts. It seems fitting that it ends with an overlong, under-interesting lullaby.