Joan Baez – Vol 1

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Folk Music Review, Joan Baez

Revisiting, and as magical as remembered

A recent interview with Joan Baez at 78, on her ‘farewell tour’  sent me back to visit her first, heavily traditional, folk ballad albums. Hearing that pure, clear effortless voice again has been a wonderful mix of melancholy and delight. Melancholy (ah, all our youth, or whenever this was first heard) but, also the choice of songs. Most of them are ancient ancient and (I assume) carry the weight of some of the centuries they have been sung in. Many of them are about death, many about love : and still more for death and love entwined.

I have to say that listening to many of the stellar female chanteuses of today I find a curling disdainful lip curls around my ears (strange mixed image!) So many voices seem to over, sobbingly EMOTE. ‘Look how much I am FEELING – or are full of various fashionable wails and vocal tricks. I wish many of them would sit down and listen to just how much more feeling an interpretation can be which floats out the music, and lets it do the speaking. Joan sings simply and clearly, her vibrato seems to happen without force or strain.

I confess to listening to these old lays, full of women done wrong to, loved and left, (Mary Hamilton, a Child Ballade) or women who decided not to engage because they were bound to be loved-and-left (Silver Dagger), tales of death on the high seas, death in battle and they did strange things to me. Somehow her renditions seem to carry the memory of how others may have sung them over earlier generations.

Pretty silver guitar playing as well. Magic. Thank you Joan Baez.

Baez of course has also been an activist all her life. I find interesting that she was largely brought up a Quaker (both her mother and her father had been the children of ministers from other Christian traditions) That spirit of both social activism, egalitarianism and the absence of the need for a mediator between ‘the Word’ and the congregation are somehow linked with the music she engaged with. And so too is the reflective  listening  for the truth of the music and the words to express, so that the singer does not need to overdo her feeling for it. Here is another performer who allows the listener room.

Although knows as a fine interpreter of other people’s songs, as well as an interpreter of traditional music, she has also penned some fine songs herself Though not on this album which is all ‘traditional’ – composer and lyric writer unknown.

Joan Baez Vol 1 UK
Joan Baez Vol 1 USA

Sadly, this album does not seem available on the American site to buy as an MP3, and several of the reviews mention that the quality of the reissue pressing is not that well done

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Julie Fowlis – Uam

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Folk Music, Folk Music Review, Gaelic music, Julie Fowlis, Uam

Uam, Uam, thank you ma’am

On the cusp of Scotland’s historic vote, it seems only fitting to post a review of one of my favourite ‘daughter of Scotland’ singers, Julie Fowlis, who sings traditional songs – in Gaelic. Her voice is as ever, properly sweet (not cloyingly so) true and clear. I have several albums by Fowlis, first encountered some years ago in a festival in Galway.

I had no idea what she was singing about in terms of precise detail or story but the emotional places she sings from are outwith the need to understand the words. Music can really be language enough

Julie Fowlis, as she always does,  continues to inhabit a musical space of passion, generosity and joyfulness. On this album she also shares songs with other chanteuses of an older generation, Mary Smith and Eddy Reader.  This follows Fowlis’ belief that a song is a gift (Uam means from me) which is passed to the listener, and if that listener is also musical they may pass it on to another listener in performance. So there is the sense of this music being handed down through the generations.

I’m not Scottish, but the sense of ancientness and ‘in the blood’ness in this music is palpable. Maybe its just Fowlis’ own inhabiting of the music with such integrity.

As well as the wonderful strange vocals (but here is a link to the page of her website which lets you read the lyrics in translation into English there are the complex musical rhythms and textures of the instruments to delight the listener

As ever, she’s produced a haunting album, even the songs of sorrowful yearning speak of joy at feeling itself, and the joy of music. Fowlis may indeed be something of a star on the Celtic music scene, but to listen to her albums, and indeed to see her live, is to experience a performer who serves the music, and the audience for that music, not her own ego. All the musicians shine!

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Inside Llewyn Davis – Soundtrack

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Bob Dylan, Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Dave Van Ronk, Inside Llewyn Davis, Justin Timberlake, Marcus Mumford, Oscar Isaac, Stark Sands, T Bone Burnett

Sweet melancholy folk.

The music (of course!) in the Coen’s film of Inside Llewyn Davis was absolutely integral to its charm, and with images from the film spooling in my mind’s eye and music tantalisingly playing, half remembered, ditto, getting the soundtrack was a must

Oscar Isaac, on both CD and film is stellar. Though I found myself wondering what Oscar Isaac himself naturally plays and sounds like; as a clearly consummate actor, I suspect what we may have here is Llewyn Davis as musician and singer – Isaac himself may have quite different musical qualities. One of the hallmarks of the film is its loving steeping into the style of the times, both vocally and instrumentally – listening to Dave van Ronk’s playout track of Green Green Rocky Road, and the penultimate track of an unreleased studio recording of Dylan singing ‘Farewell’ in the context of the other 12 tracks shows this. There is a similar plangent, dourly tender quality to Isaac’s voice as in that early Dylan track – adding a nice little irony to the use of the Dylan at the end of the film, as a reminder of ‘then everything changed-– Llewyn Davis SOOOO close but not quite there!

I couldn’t QUITE go the full 5 star on the soundtrack, only because there are 3 tracks I skip over, as not to my ears for listening to outwith the film – the ‘joke’ Please Mr Kennedy, the very traditional old bouncy folk Roving Gambler, and The Storms Are On The Ocean (hope no one punches me for this – see the film!)

The rest are fabulous, as songs, as arrangements by the performing artists and T Bone Burnett, and as instrumental and vocal renditions.

But………I do agree with the CD sleeve note compiler that standout of many standouts is the rendition of Fare Thee Well (Dink’s Song) with Isaac and Marcus Mumford, who is co musical producer. This is ineffable! Isaacs darkly honeyed, anguished vocals woven with the sweeter, lighter quality of Mumford.

There are so many little teasers to performers of that time and slightly later, in this music – from the Peter, Paul and Mary of Stark Sands, Justin Timberlake and Carey Mulligan, the on-the-verge-of early Simon and Garfunkel on the Isaac, Mumford track, and the quality of an almost but not quite there early folky Dylan from Isaac himself. Stark Sands rendition of Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing On My Mind is also a real delight.

The album is definitely a fuller experience if you saw the film, but pretty darned fine on its own.

Inside Llewyn Davis Soundtrack Recording Amazon UK
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June Tabor – Ashore

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Ashore, Folk Music, June Tabor, Music review

Authentically musical, authentically from the heart

June Tabor’s voice is quite a magical one.  The absolute reverse of technologically manipulated all surface no substance muzak, Tabor sings in a way which draws the listener into their own heart and soul. Her voice is both a clear channel for emotion, and deeply engaged with that. She doesn’t ‘perform’ emotion, she enables the emotion in the music to express itself, rather than expressing her own emotion. Her style is therefore that of surrender to the music and words, so that the listener can engage directly with the music, the language, and the musician serving the music.

I’m a big fan of music which is reflective, and initially was a little disappointed at the tracks which showed another side to Tabor – the French songs, which are more upbeat and playful, and also the tracks, such as the wonderful Selkie, and The Brean Lament, where in part she speaks rather than sings the narration, but I’m slowly coming round to the variety. This is the sort of music which you can imagine listening to, sitting in a snug little pub, somewhere on the Hebridean isles, whilst a storm outside is raging, and Tabor and the musicians take you into the deeps of the sea, and where the sea meets the land.

For me the long opening and closing tracks, Finistere and Across The Wide Ocean, express this most sublimely, and, without anything else, make this 5 star Even if a certain Bank does get in the way a little whenever Tabor sings the word Santander in ‘Finistere’!

Ashore Amazon UK
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Leonard Cohen – Recent Songs

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Folk World Fusion, Leonard Cohen, Raffi Hakopian, Recent Songs Album

Beautiful and distinctly unsettling

This is a marvellously seductive album, which doesn’t immediately grab the listener (well this listener) by the throat, but silkily slides into the mind, nagging and teasing, until it itches at the ears and heart, insistently, to be played again. Of course, this album may indeed have contained Recent Songs on its release in 1979, now, they must almost be ready for retitling as Songs From Long Ago!

The track which grabbed me most immediately was the plangent The Window, redolent with references to the mystical heart, and the mysteriousness of love, fleshly and divine – Rumi a strong influence. The combination of much Christian reference ‘The Host’, ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’ and rose references within that context, plus the strange haunting violin of Raffi Hakopian, hinting at another tradition from the shtetls of Eastern Europe, provides a deep texture, the music and the lyrics setting against each other, almost like counterpoint.

This is a subtle and rewarding album, musically and lyrically. Cohen employs a mariachi band on one long track, The Ballad of The Absent Mare. On other tracks there’s use of Oud, Accordion, Sax, Cello and Horns as well as keyboards and Cohen’s guitar. I’ve described it as `unsettling’ because, particularly on the tracks which explore the connections and the disconnections between fleshly love and divine love the pulls of heaven and earth are mirrored by music which sets up a sense of yearning for something out of reach – that perfection of union and merging with the beloved, however the beloved is perceived. Hakopian’s heartful, soulful, longing for home violin is particularly well in evidence on these tracks – The Guests, The Window, The Traitor, The Gypsy’s Wife.

Cohen uses his voice very lyrically, colouring the songs – again, often to unsettling results. His voice is most tender, most lyrical and sweet on The Traitor, hinting at the English Folk Music tradition by way of a nod at Tennyson’s Lady of Shallot, but the lyrics are darkly on the edge of humour, very dark indeed `

keep my body here to lie upon, you can move it up and down and when I’m sleeping run some wire through that Rose and wind the Swan.

A wonderful album bringing together darkness and light. Full of dynamic oppositions.

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Leonard Cohen – Ten New Songs

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Leonard Cohen, Pop Fusion Music Review, Sharon Robinson, Ten New Songs

Lenfest – creativity undimmed

I’ve been having a little bit of a revisit of Cohen’s work.

This album, beautifully enhanced by the backing vocals (and indeed production) of Sharon Robinson, has a smoky, smooth jazz, torch song feel.

The voice has dropped and cracked with age, and some of the songs almost sprechsung in delivery, but Cohen’s lyrics are always worth focusing on. The musicality is provided by Robinson’s mellifluous, floated backing vocals, often slightly on the off-beat, setting up interesting tensions – most notably on the achingly beautiful, textured Alexandra Leaving – which seems to contain many possible meanings within it.

I also really loved the connected songs, A Thousand Kisses Deep (I’m back on Boogie St) and the penultimate track, Boogie St – lines, and indeed, musical threads echo between the two. Religious imagery and the juxtaposition of sexual connection and connection to something transcendent and immaterial continues to twine through these songs, Cohen’s deep engagement with the mysteriousness of embodiment, a life which is matter and spirit.

Instrumentally, I found this less engaging than a much earlier album Recent Songs where Cohen used many instruments from different traditions, and styles of playing, to produce a tapestry of sounds; this album relying more on Sharon Robinson: ‘All tracks arranged programmed and performed by Sharon Robinson’ – so the use of synthesiser keyboards misses something wild, dynamic, untamed which was provided by the diversity of musicianship on the previous mentioned album. Her vocals though, are gorgeous

However – as a small, critical aside, in trying to find a Youtube video to allow the playing of Alexandra Leaving, I found several covers of the song by other artists. To a woman and man they all seemed to find the need to embellish with vocal frills and furbelows, or over emote – and this includes Robinson herself, who now sings this as a solo in Cohen’s live concerts, since clearly the higher notes are now beyond him. What i find intriguing is that no chanteuse has understood that the complexity of the lyrics, part taken from, part freeflow inspired from Cavafy’s poem The God Abandons Anthony, needs the musical simplicity and dispassion Cohen himself allows.

Sure his voice is not the most beauteous of instruments and curiously it is exactly the smoky lived in damaged harshness of it that work so stunningly with the tenderness and violence of his lyrics. Sorry, other singers, but you seem to press your interpretations on too much, trying to create a thing which shows off your vocal beauty, or lets us see your suffering. Cohen’s curious stoicism IS the point that lifts this above the mundane song of the end of a love affair,  and contains the conflicts.

Here is the Cavafy poem which inspired this

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
as is right for you who proved worthy of this kind of city,
go firmly to the window
and listen with deep emotion, but not
with the whining, the pleas of a coward;
listen—your final delectation—to the voices,
to the exquisite music of that strange procession,
and say goodbye to her, to the Alexandria you are losing. 

In a sense,the instruction to LISTEN with deep emotion but without whining and empty pleas, rather seems an instruction to a performer, like the instructors to actors in Hamlet to not saw the air, etc.
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Leonard Cohen Ten New Songs Amazon USA

Eliza Carthy – Anglicana

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Anglicana, Eliza Carthy, English folk music, Folk Music

Glee to set toes a-tapping!

This a wonderful album of traditional music from these sceptred isles.

I love the combination of what almost sounds like a scratch band who just happened to pick up some instruments which were lying around, and then launched into playing and revealed how skillful they are. This feels spontaneous (I’m sure it isn’t, but the absence of a ‘produced’ tweaked in a studio feel is what gives rise to the immediate joyousness)

Carthy’s ebulliant and bouncy fiddle playing is hard to sit still with, demanding the listener jig and twirl.

Perhaps this is sacriligious, but I rather prefer daughter to mother, vocally. Norma Waterson is superb at dark strong tough smokiness (even if she doesn’t, for me, touch the parts which only June Tabor can reach in earthy ancestral soulfulness) but that is what she always does. Eliza Carthy has some of this, but there is also a spring and a lightness and flexibility to her voice. At times she sounds sweetly, sorrowfully mellow, (listen to the Bold Privateer without tears threatening, if you can!), but she can mix this all up and sing of joys and frivolities with equal ease.

I had some reservations about the instrumental piece, MCMBE, as I  was more enchanted by the combination of Carthy’s singing and playing, than I was by MCMBE (Martin Carthy MBE) the piece composed by Carthy Junior for dad, and found my attention dipping a bit here, particularly as it jarred for me a little with the English, particularly North Country English, traditional heritage of music, which is the concept of this album. MCMBE is like finding a chapter from a Virginia Woolf book inexplicably in the middle of one by Fielding!

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June Tabor and Oysterband – Ragged Kingdom

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Folk Music, Folk Rock Fusion, June Tabor, Music review, Oysterband

Electrification and melancholy benefit from each other

I saw June Tabor and Oysterband in concert when they were ‘previewing’ what would be tracks from this album.

I went to that concert because of Tabor, but ended up also being seduced by Oysterband as well. Tabor’s dark, brooding voice still reaches most deeply and soulfully I think on the very simply accompanied The Hills Of Shiloh, and/but she is equally at home as chanteuse with the driving rhythms of Oysterband, and a more folk rock fusion. From the exciting opening track Bonny Bunch Of Roses the listener is taken unstoppably through Tabor and Oysterband’s John Jones duetting on Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart and Son David.

Here is that exciting, driving, opening track – which they also used to open the gig – I could barely keep seated!

It’s probably wrong to expect a studio album to quite reach the excitement of a live concert, but Jones’ voice seems a touch more exposed, on piano high notes in the studio, against Tabor’s powerful, but never straining vocals, specifically on Love Will Tear Us Apart. Notes which seemed to be pushed through only through felt emotion from Jones in that live performance here seems almost to be the result of technical strain on Love Will Tear Us Apart, though in the tight duetting on Dylan’s Seven Curses Jones soars freely, and he is beautifully tender with Tabor on the closing track The Dark End Of The Street

However, here is a beautiful, un-strained rendition of Love Will Tear Us Apart filmed at Union Chapel London, which I think matches the two voices brilliantly. A little gem, for all broken lovers

Highlights for me are the excitement of the opening track, the aforementioned The Hills of Shiloh, the dynamism and vibrant excitement of If My Love Loves Me – particularly Ian Telfer’s violin, the folk/religious ballad The Leaves Of Life, contrasting again, the driving, punchy beat and some beautiful acapella from Tabor and Oysterband.

But, hey, on subsequent plays, I found myself adding more tracks as highlights!

Oysterband and Tabor seem to spur each other enjoyably on. My big regret on this album is the non-inclusion of a couple of numbers from the live show – an electrifying performance of Jefferson’s Airplane’s White Rabbit and Velvet Underground’s All Tomorrow’s Parties (admittedly the latter one featured on the previous album with June Tabor , and as they were then called, The Oyster Band, 21 years ago) both proving Tabor can out Nico Nico and out Slick Slick. Her voice is truly amazing, and Oysterband have just the energy to match it. Rock’s loss has been Folk’s gain, with Tabor. She could I think sing almost anything .

I love the dark and painful reflective melancholy of Tabor’s vocals, but the drive imposed by Oysterband’s more urgent music works as a brilliant accelerator to Tabor, and she imposes a discipline and restraint well on them, so the balance point between the two is wonderful, electrifying.

Ragged Kingdom Amazon UK
Ragged Kingdom Amazon UK

Julie Fowlis – Cuilidh

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Cuilidh, Folk Music, Folk Music Review, Gaelic music, Julie Fowlis

Breaks your heart and then mends it again

I saw/heard Julie Fowlis (link to her website) as part of an arts festival in Galway a few years ago and found myself alternately with tears pouring down my cheeks and unable to stay seated because of the need to jump, jig, whirl and dance. She has a voice of great and effortless purity, musicality and heart. To listen to Julie sing is to be convinced that opening your mouth and having heavenly sounds pour forth is our natural birthright. Alas that probably isn’t true; its just that her voice is so natural and seemingly uncontrived.

Unless you speak Gaelic (or perhaps another of the Goidelic languages) you won’t have a CLUE what she’s singing about (nor will you care) You’ll just be amazed at her apparent facility to be singing tongue twisters with precision and speed (try Puirt-a-Beul-Set and I defy any listener to stay composed and seated!)

The charm, skill and passion of these songs are beautifully rendered by Julie and the musicians with fiddle pipe and drum – and for those coming to her music via MP3 and so missing the lyrics in translation I think you can find them in translation on her own site

It may or may not aid your enjoyment!

Unfortunately this particular album is not available to listen to on mp3 on Amazon, but the store page of Julie Fowlis’ site DOES have tracks on 30 sec listen, though you may have to download a particular player

However, the Youtube video IS of one of the tracks. Curiously, what the video doesn’t do justice to is the way Julie engages with and connects with a live audience. I suspect there was a degree of ‘production for camera’ in this – I’ve seen her in concert on a couple of occasions now, and she is one of those performers who seems to sing just for you alone. All several hundred of you.

Cuilidh Amazon UK
Cuilidh Amazon USA