Review - Sadie Jemmett, The Blacksmith's Girl

Sadie Jemmett

THE BLACKSMITH’S GIRL

Wilflower

★★★★1/2

The debut solo album of a singer/songwriter who has traveled long and far in order to make this intimate self-penned album. You’ll remember it for a while.

It might be a bit bold of me to direct you somewhere else but if you’re interested in Sandie Jemmett, I would highly recommend that you type her name into youtube.com. You will find this little featurette, about twelve minutes long, recorded from a bunker underneath Metropolis studios in 2009. Three of the songs from the album are here, in live form. It’s an environment that really does suit her; the bunker’s acoustics show off every foray of her voice, very strong, very dynamic, and bring out the unusual chord arrangements in her songs. They are, for the most part, fairly calm, but by no means lacking nuance.

Thank goodness that Wildflower records have managed to transfer the same quality to THE BLACKSMITH’S GIRL, Sadie’s debut album. Up until about Another Way to Be, the third track, it is sedate but still draws you in, the intimacy working with lyrics like ‘And oh my little darling…I can see my mirrored walls are falling/And I know that you see deep inside of me’.

The great thing about Jemmett though is that she doesn’t rely on that intimacy. What surprises you on this Metropolis featurette is how much character she has when she performs. In interview, she’s quite small, quite British, but then in tracks like the titular Blacksmith’s Girl her acoustic voice conjures up this dramatic heroine, slinging a pistol over her shoulder. It’s then that you realise her accent, an inevitable off-shoot of her Cambridgeshire upbringing, hides an unusual life-story. Trailing from home to home as a child, picking up a guitar, Jemmett claims, was the first thing that really made sense. And the way in which she’s clung to it in times of crisis comes out in her music: ‘I feel like I’m falling down/So I begin by breathing out/So I begin by breathing in.’ Equally you see the character that got her through it and out on the road in all kind of fun and bizarre situations (she was a backing singer in a reggae band at one point).

This album’s been a long time coming, it’s been brewing for many years. I think the best thing that can be said of it, perhaps of any such album from a singer/songwriter that you feel like you’ve met her. And she really was quite something. Katy Browse

 

Review - Meg Baird, Seasons on Earth

Meg Baird

SEASONS ON EARTH

Wichita Recordings

★★★★

Following a debut of covers that has been labeled as a cult classic, a young folk singer and guitarist tries out some of her own material.

Picking up my copy of SEASONS ON EARTH, my first response is a tinge of disappointment. Not through any flaw of the album itself, I hasten to add, but simply because I have a pre-release wallet, and therefore, no lyrics to read through while it plays. With some artists this tends not to be a problem but with Meg Baird, I will always listen carefully to what it is she is saying and not just the beautiful ethereal voice in which she is saying it. The community of musicians from whence she comes seems to demand a certain intelligence. To track Meg’s influences is to look not only to folk and its more psychedelic offerings but to such figures as New York Beat poet Kenneth Koch to whom Baird nods in the title of her album.

This being said this is not an intellectual exercise. Certainly her last album, 2007’s debut DEAR COMPANION, was anything but. Its surprising range of covers quite rightly earnt her a name as a solo artist outside of band Espers; it was an incredibly personal and emotionally wrought LP. So what to expect from her second album, four years down the line from DEAR COMPANION’s songs of love, betrayal and isolation and this time largely self-penned.

I wish I could have the lyrics in front of me, I really do. It sounds like a simple complaint but Baird joins the likes of Joanna Newsom and Joni Mitchell with a voice so tender that it often hides the beauty of her poetry. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing in itself, I have poured over both Newsom and Mitchell’s album sleeves in the past and found a wealth of material to excited about. Yet it does mean, at this point, that it is difficult to get beneath the cryptic surface of her songs.

The surface itself is very accomplished, having brought in the talents of many guest musicians. And you do get tantalizing glimpses of Baird’s writing talent, such as the melodically bewitching Even Rain – ‘that night, when the clouds and the maidens go down, the fool and the fool come face to face…we’re all the same’. The album’s two cover version’s suggests themes that I have no doubt wait to be uncovered in her own songs. Mark-Almond Band’s Friends is a sharp contrast to them stylistically and speaks frankly of growing older, of the transition from an idealistic youth. It is followed by a gem, Beatles and Stones which was originally recorded by House of Love. Here, references to the troubles and the politics of the 1970’s are balanced out by memories of the bands that led the youth culture, remembered with fondness. When placed in Baird’s own chronology it is a beautiful, complex choice of song, I just wish I could get at the rest! Hopefully when the album is released at the end of this month my frustrations will come to an end. Katy Browse

www.megbaird.com

Review - Jennie Stearns, Blurry Edges

Jennie Stearns

BLURRY EDGES

Self-released

★★★★

A young country artist releases an album written over a hard period in her life; her clever use of instrumentals makes her sound and her sorrows enchanting.

In the past few years, the light country music of New York singer-songwriter Jennie Stearns has changed somewhat. What was once a musical collaboration with banjos and cappoed guitars is something else entirely. She has always been generous to the musicians that she works with and inventive in their use. Their clever layering has been an integral part of her soulful songs, but here she is only backed by a piano and a lonely guitar, it leaves voice her voice fragile.

It sings of a sorrow that guides her new direction and tinges her lyrics, though she sets it out so beautifully that it never feels overbearing. I tend to find albums that dwell on heartbreak a little depressing, but Stearns’ is told in a complex portrait. It has glimpses of a life - ‘dancing to Neil Diamond/in a dive in New Hampshire’ - as well as of that life’s frustrations, namely an uninspired partner: ‘You, captive in your bed…watching the sand drip down’. These quotes are from the opening track, Shadows on the Water. From then her songs create flashes of scenes that are gone before you can figure them out and form tragic characters like Frida that intrigue you in their poetry. If you were going to distinguish Stearns from better-known artists such as Gillian Welch and Cat Power, you need only to listen to these enchanting lyrics. A genuine song-writing talent.

Blurry Edges, alluding both to the state of mind in which it was written as well as its soft style, is used to finish the album. It is another great song but it brings a final note of optimism: ‘Sing, sing, until you’re warm’. Katy Browse

jenniestearns.com

Review - Cocos Lovers, Elephant Lands

 

Cocos Lovers

ELEPHANT LANDS

Self-released

★★★★★

The second album of a Kent-based folk group of eight. A concept album of sorts.

If you wanted to make up Cocos Lovers from scratch you’d probably have to get the Fleet Foxes and Vampire Weekend into a pot and then add some choir boys. They embrace the idea of young folk where the instruments are graded by eccentricity and no song is complete without a harmony verging on the sublime. The fiddles, guitars, flute and percussions are handed amongst the family band and the result is an immediate intimacy. They recorded the album in the back of a converted caravan. They’re just…wonderful. Their first album, ‘Johanes’, was full of spiraling songs, to be danced to in a field (preferably with a little bit cider) or enjoyed at home for their life and unassumingly poetic lyrics.

In ELEPHANT LANDS the group has developed a significant wanderlust. The titular track begins with a guitar solo, laid onto which are maracas and drumming in the style of a convincing stampede; we are told to ‘run to the hills’. Okay, it’s a little bit like Lion King, a little bit more so when their harmonies take on tribal-like chants. But in an utterly charming way; they have morphed the countryside and wilderness themes of folk into a safari. The same spirit of adventure presides over Feral and Wild, Door to the Andes and Fortuna. And then in Blackened Shore they have some Spanish guitar and the traveling theme is played with in different ways. Like the traditional serenading of a lover who’s left port for the high seas (Days are Long), a lovely fifty second snippet of the girl’s vocals. But my hands-down favourite take on the idea is in Barcelona. We have a live feel, the band setting up, a fiddler and a Spanish guitar to set the scene for a gnarled story of someone who sounds suspiciously like a pirate. Who else is ‘born with no arms and a twisted mind’.

It’s an eccentric take on the concept album, I grant you, but I can’t stress this enough, they pull it off. After all, they are wonderful. Katy Browse

Review - Gurrumel, Rrakala

Gurrumel

RRAKALA

Skinnyfish Music

★★★★

The second album of an artist whose indigenous voice broke into the music industry first-time round.

It is in the seventh track of Gurrumul Yunupingu’s album that his music is at its most powerful. Firstly because it is has his infamous soaring melodies, showing off his voice to its fullest (Sting once said that it was the ‘voice of a higher being’). But also because it is when the traditions of folk seem to collide fully with those of the his Aboriginal community. Djottara (the name given to all Gumatj women) tells of a girl’s distress at being parted from her home; ‘her thoughts’, the translation says, ‘[are] like the wail of a harmonica’. That her cries have to be translated, in itself, is another kind of isolation, adding to the feeling of someone far from home. Yet the voice which echoes ‘the wail of [the] harmonica’ shows that some sounds do cross linguistic borders and those of traditions.

Oh. The above sounds like a bit of cheap shot. Like I’m undermining Gurrumul as a musician. His last album won multiple awards at the Australian Recording Industry Association’s 2009 ceremony and went double platinum, this is not just a man putting traditional music on to tape. Since his last album’s success he has worked hard to delve into other genres and instruments within his own cultural context and RRAKALA shows his melodies and arrangements at their best. Yet you can also see a kind of personal exploration of what it means to be a figurehead, what it means to intersect with a wholly different musical world. And as my enthusiasm for the track that I mentioned above shows, it is possible to appreciate Gurrumul for more than just his undeniable spirituality. Katy Browse

Review - Dala, Girls from the North Country

 

Dala

GIRLS FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY [LIVE]

Compass Records

★★★

An album from a Canadian folk-pop duo with the sweetest voices that you’ve ever heard.

It is easy to place Dala under the category of ‘likeable’. The songs they have picked to cover in GIRLS FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY suit their innocent harmonies and those they have written (Horses, Marilyn Monroe) are down-to-earth in a Taylor Swift kind-of-a-way. They write of fans they meet and the times that they have shared and, with the album recorded live, it all brings to mind a set at a summer festival.

Yet the girls negotiate the idea of ‘folk-pop’ really very well, and that likeable sound comes with its own degree of insight. I particularly like their cover of Joni Mitchell’s classic Both Sides Now; their vocals and guitars make it a heck of a lot lighter than the original but the experience and the poetry is still there. The same goes for the titular Girl from the North Country lifted from Cash and Dylan’s repertoire. And with their harmonies given some alto gravity by guest appearances from Oh Susana and Good Lovelies, GIRLS FROM THE NORTH COUNTRY is more than a pair of incredibly sweet voices. Katy Browse

Review - Beoga, How to Tune a Fish

 

Beoga

HOW TO TUNE A FISH

Compass Records

★★★★

Right from the first reel of HOW TO TUNE A FISH you know you’re dealing with something very different. A slippery customer, to continue the fishy puns with which their sleeve notes are stuffed. They are one of those bands that lurk in the murky waters beyond genre. Oh look, another pun.  The band originally formed after a heated ‘jamming’ session at the All-Ireland Fleadh and they have gone on to release four albums together (this being the fourth). They are made up of Damian McKee Seán Óg Graham, on twin duelling accordians, pianist Liam Bradley and four times All-Ireland bodhrán champion Eamon Murray with the later addition of Niamh Dunne’s smooth and mature vocals. Eclectic, intimidating skilled, Beogo have spent a long time honing their sound; it is music of many influences from straight out Irish Folk to Americana and the quirky Vaudeville performance. All of this helps them to live up to their name, ‘Beoga’, which, in translation from Gaelic, turns out to be ‘lively’.

The album starts with a titular track, a reel, an original composition like many of the album’s offerings. The fiddle introduces itself slowly, before being backed up with some sly piano chords, again tentative. As one accordion joins them a reel is set up. If there is one thing this band aims to do however, it is to constantly surprise the listener. Cue the second accordion joining/challenging the first, increasing the tempo of the song as they then head through a dizzy mixture of styles from something almost jazz-like to the more traditional. Never a dull moment.

To the craftsmanship of the instrumentalists is added Dunne’s voice. As I said previously, it is incredibly smoky and mature, a real addition to the band if not just for its depth. However, appearing after the first two tracks of HOW TO TUNE, both reels, in ‘Home Cooking’ she seems a little out of place, like a babysitter sent in to look after some precocious teenagers. This feeling soon disappears, however, as the lyrical bridge between the verse and chorus (‘Hear the dinner bell…’) is joined by a cow bell, and you can hear the smiling in her voice. When we hear her next, her undeniable vocal talent having been paraded just enough, it is in a track somehow more appropriate to the band’s feel. As she leads her bandmates through a rendition of the old Vaudeville classic ‘Come in Out of The Rain’ (originally recorded by Ada Jones) you can’t help yourself, in turn, cracking a smile. Katy Browse

www.beogamusic.com

Review - Pilgrim's Way, Wayside Courtesies

Pilgrim’s Way

WAYSIDE COURTESIES

Fellside Recordings

★★★★

A North West Folk trio release their debut album, guaranteed to find the fans that are out there waiting for them

I challenge anyone to be surprised by the early signs of success that have fallen upon the young Pilgrim’s Way. This is very good folk. They are traditionalist in their material, in their approach to the music but their youth brings it a refreshing vitality that will see them bringing in crowds at the several UK festivals and folk club gigs at which they are due to appear later this year. To tell you the story of their fast rise to acclaim, these were all won off the back of a single promo EP.

Simply repeating their taglines here, however would not give WAYSIDE COURTESIES it’s proper due. Many better judges than me have lent their weight to the band’s description of themselves as ‘Refreshingly different [yet] reassuringly traditional’. With its make up of Lucy Wright’ vocals, the fiddling of Tom Kitching (a BBC Radio Young Folk Awards finalist) as well the inventive box playing of Edwin Beasant, this trio have been christened as ‘the real deal’ by the likes of BBC 2’s Mike Harding. The album, I would say, is a testament to their talents but also a really enjoyable listen in its own right.

Beasant is allowed to shine through in his own composition Jig Jolo, ending the album and Wright’s vocals are left in versatile a cappella in the track My Generous Lover. But they are at their best ensemble, in such tour de forces as that which opens the album (Only a Soldier) and just a track or so on, in Martinmas Time. Here, all the musicians’ strengths move behind the ballad to give it life and to capture the character of its mischievous heroine who easily outwits a whole garrison, a cheeky tale of transvestitism. Her instantly likeable intelligence and that of her song, to me, represent the appeal of this young band. A sense of mischief and fun neatly packaged in an accomplished studio album.

Review - The Waterboys, An Appointment with Mr. Yeats

The Waterboys

AN APPOINTMENT WITH MR YEATS

Proper Records

★★★1/2

A concept album from a lyrical Rock veteran

I’m a massive fan of William Butler Yeats, I want to get this straight from the start. If anyone came off badly in a musical union with WB Yeats then it would, undoubtedly, be the other guy. It’s lucky then that Mike Scott of The Waterboys has treated him with respect. He sat down in 2005 with the Finneran Edition of The Complete Works and worked through its 600 pages many times until he found a handful of poems that suggested tunes to him or responded to his slight tugs and probings. AN APPOINTMENT WITH MR YEATS is the result, due to be released in September.

With this careful approach, the songs have kept much of the depth of the original writings (with a Waterboys twist). Scott’s Hammond organ works below the vocals in News For The Delphic Oracle to make the poem incarnate and he is helped, here, by the fact that the original is a tale of classical lust, a subject oddly suited to his lusty brand of Rock. The Song Of The Wandering Aengus is probably a less obvious example. In Yeats it tells of a man who decided to go fishing in a fairy glen. When, unsurprisingly, the ‘silver trout’ that he catches becomes a ‘glimmering girl’, he launches on a lifelong quest to find her again. The lad’s wanderings are invested with a real sense of desperation, a world-weariness. There is perhaps even a hint of autobiography around it’s closing verse: ‘Though I am old with wandering /Through hollow lands and hilly lands/I will find out where she has gone/And kiss her lips and take her hands’.

Yeats and The Waterboys’ relationship, however, is by no means one-sided and Scott gives as much as he takes from the old poet. The roaring Hosting of The Shee opens the album and here, like so often throughout, the musician has used much of the meter of the original, enforced by solid drumming and baseline. It is an energy that perhaps Yeats has never seen before. He also seems to anticipate my biggest fear; classics like The Lake Isle of Innisfree, the poems that many quote when asked of WB Yeats, are not just lamely put to tunes. Halfway through the album it appears; originally it is a short poem that uses the natural landscape as a metaphor for finding a kind of inner peace. In The Waterboys’ version (cover?), however, there is no sense that the band are fleeing anybody or anything as they describe their rural dream. It is steadfastedly relaxed and allows the Hammond organ and Scott’s vocals to take on an almost jazz-like languor.

It is a characteristic measure of style, confidence and depth. For those such as myself who have not previously come across The Waterboys, you need to look back to 1985 for their first album, ‘The Whole Of The Moon’. Their hard Rock sound mixed, even then, with intelligent and literary musings, made them stand out and, though fashions changed and fans fell by the wayside, Mike Scott and core musician Anthony Thiselthwaite have persevered in the same vein. I for one am glad that they did; this album is a great achievement and loyal fans should be very excited for its upcoming release. Katy Browse

www.mikescottwaterboys.com

Review - Cahalen Morrison & Eli West, 'The Holy Coming of the Storm'

Cahalen Morrison & Eli West

THE HOLY COMING OF THE STORM

Self-released

★★★★★

The debut album of two regulars on the American bluegrass scene and one of extraordinary sensitivity

Cahalen Morrison and his powerful voice have been around on the American circuit for a while, as has his talent on the fingerstyle guitar, lap slide, mandolin and clawhammer banjo.  As has the equally multi-instrumental, equally talented Eli West.  Appearing at the same festivals, clubs and picking camps and harbouring a common appreciation of the mountain folk traditions many have seen it as merely a matter of time before the pair got together.  This album marks the arrival of a major new talent, heralded by a glowing recommendation by renowned producer, musician and Appalachian expert Dirk Powell.  ‘Cahalen and Eli’s music’, he says, ‘evokes a brotherhood of the road that transcends the relatively short time they’ve been touring together.’

His reflections on the pair praise their channelling of the natural mountain spirit into their songs, its strength and its ultimate vulnerability.  Ironic, then, that they are both from Seattle.  But, really, you don’t need to be an expert to realise that the boys have hit upon something.  What with Cahalen’s blues edge, they could be singing songs of great passion and get away with it.  But their lyrics are simple; their twelve self-penned songs are full of images of nature and a domestic life, really quite humble.  At the songs have a definite intricacy, the images placed next to each other suggestively form narratives that are odd and beguiling.  There is a sensitivity here that runs throughout their style as Cahalen’s vocals are balanced out in harmony and the pair just let the music speak for itself.  In fact, one of the early tracks of the album neatly introduces the picking into the lyrics as it takes the place of the doctor’s orders in On God’s Rocky Shore (‘I went to the doctor, and the doctor said…’).

However West is not overshadowed.  Given the lead vocals in possibly my favourite track of the album, My lover, Adorned, his voice, the softer of the two, is always there in background or in foreground.  Even here it is wonderfully gentle as it adds another layer of depth to the lyrics: ‘I’m just a man with all but a plan, with all but a plan, doin’ what any man would do.’

They are on British shores come the end of this year, digging up their family histories and doing a bit of touring on the side.  If it their investigations add more depth to their music then all the better.  If not then at least it brings this exciting bluegrass duo into UK venues. Katy Browse

www.cahalen.com

Review, Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, Walnut Creek

 

Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick

WALNUT CREEK: LIVE RECORDINGS 1989-1996

Fellside Recordings Ltd.

★★★★1/2

A piece of Folk Revivalist heritage given a bit of new life.

This year sees Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick both celebrating their 70^th birthdays and, as Paul Adams says in the cover sleeve to the album, the pair often seem to be ‘an institution, in the sense of being always familiar, always around.’  Hailing from their respective iconic bands (Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention) the two have collaborated on and off since the 60s and this album brings together a collection of more recent live recordings.

There is an obvious joy to be had in the fact that these are live.  Intuitive to each other, both take risks in performance and some of the straight instrumentals show the kind of spontaneity that has entertained audiences for years.  ‘Porcupine Rag’ is a great example, Carthy on the guitar and Swarbrick on the mandolin, each trying to catch up with each other.  And it also has a fumble at the beginning.  One of the many hallmarks of character on WALNUT CREEK.

The album’s also just a really good way to catch up with these guys; it’s neither an old record nor a ‘best of’ compilation and it benefits from this eclecticism, showing the Revivalists off properly.  There is the meaty Dominion of the Sword from their 1988 album ‘Right of Passage’, in which Carthy spits out words like tongue-twisters: ‘It'll the foster the master, plaster disaster…Ventures, enters, seeks and it centres/Ever the upper hand, never a dissenter’.  Then there is the classic Arthur McBride, carried instead by its melody and the movement of its narrative (a subversive tale of an uprising against military leaders).  And, characteristically, they will always surprise you.  Based on the role of the Olympics in South African apartheid, Carthy developed A Question of Sport over the course of three years.  He had the time to carve into it again and again and the lyrics have wonderfully frustrated and surreal qualities.

With all the fun of the real thing, this is album is a good afternoon in the making.  I can only give it the recommendation that it deserves.  Katy Browse

Review - Lady Maisery, 'Weave & Spin'

 

Lady Maisery

WEAVE & SPIN

Rootbeat Records

★★★★

A debut album from traditionalist folk trio that is charming in very many ways.

All three of the Lady Maisery girls appear on their CD sleeve, each separate from the other and in a different pose and each, in a way, representing their album.  Hazel Askew, one half of The Askew Sisters (who have already released two acclaimed albums), plays with her skirt on her tip-toes giving a sense of the trio’s playful harmonies; they are one of the first bands to try and revive the old art of ‘diddling’ that still exists in Scandinavian folk and other parts of Europe.  Clear voices plait together throughout WEAVE & SPIN and diddling appears in its undiluted form in tracks like Minoorne Labajalg (a labajalg being an Estonian flat-footed waltz) where the sheer vocal agility of the band comes out.

Yet, as in so often folklore, the innocent voices can hide something a little graver.  The girls hint to this in the punning name of their group and it runs all the way through their songs.  The Changeling’s Lullaby for instance, in minor key, uses the changeling myth, that of a fairy child left as a substitute for a baby who has been stolen by the fairies, to tell of a mothers sadness.  These tracks (the surrealist ballad Nottamun Fair is another beautiful example) are as haunting and as beautiful as the tradition from which they come.  More than worthy of the sinister stare of Hannah James (previously of Kerfufle).  This unsettling edge goes throughout the album.  Tracks like Portland Town, the traditional anti-war song, combine the girls’ playfulness with something darker and lines like ‘I lost my children, 1-2-3’.  As does My Boy Jack, an adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s poem written after his son went missing in the great war, originally put to music by Peter Bellamy in the 80s.  Like the blurb to the Changeling’s Lullaby which takes a moment to point out that the myth ‘may have been an early way of coping with infant disability or post-natal depression’, the songs have their root in real suffering and strength.

Hence the look of Rowan Rheingans standing in the middle of the album cover, a slight smile on her face but poised and with intelligence.  That’s probably how I would sum up this album.  They have immense skill between them and it lets them pull off the vocal weaves and spins of the title.  It has a real grace to it.  But it also has the depth that can only come from a real connection to tradition.  Katy Browse

Review - Peatbog Faeries, 'Dust'

 

The Peatbog Faeries

DUST

Peatbog Records

★★★1/2

An album packed full of sensitivity and activity but perhaps lacking the development that it promises.

As the soft accumulation of the first track, ‘Calgary Capars’, comes into play it is clear that this sextet from the Isle of Skye are looking to move beyond the dance rhythms that have dominated their work up until now.  DUST is their seventh album, although only the fifth in the studio, and their unique brand of purely instrumental folk is just as much about playing around on the mixing desks as it is in the recording.  Half-way between tradition and technological revelation, the result here is beautiful.  Bagpipes and fiddles, intense with that highland edge, work on synthesized beats to make an ambience worthy of Archie MacFarlene’s cover art, with its blurred photos and dust particles catching the light.  The Peatbog Faeries are at one with their country’s folklore past but try to channel it in a way that uses all of creative possibilities open to them.

Dropping some of the tight post-production bass lines has, here, brought the band some aspects of live performance that they were previously missing out on.  In ‘Calgary Capars’ the fiddle listens carefully for its synthetic tempo, tentative at first, it then becomes enthusiastic.  And then, as if its owner has run out of steam, it drops out and lets the brass section take over.  There is energy, there is thought and it’s great music.   I want to be a fly on the wall in their production process.  In all honesty, I think this album is mostly about this process, long-time producer Calum McLean claiming that it has been ‘the best musical experience of [his] life’.

And the result is interesting, no doubt.  But for this to have been a great album I would have liked the same structures that are so carefully managed within the tracks themselves (to McLean’s credit) to have found their way into the thing as whole.  It would have been poignant, for instance, to end on ‘Ascent of Conival’, an eerie but joyful tale of the composer championing the Sutherland mountain of the song’s title.  Instead we are taken back into the relaxed piano and sax of ‘Fishing at Orbost’ and then called to party at ‘Room 215’.  It seems like a bit of an anti-climax.  This being said, that the band has taken such a new direction means that a climax is probably not what they intended.  For now they are content just to jam. Katy Browse

Review - The Water Tower Bucket Boys, Where The Crow Don't Fly

 

The Water Tower Bucket Boys

WHERE THE CROW DON’T FLY

Self-released

★★★★

A reflective little EP from a band obviously exploring their diffuse backgrounds and influences.  The result is a new but characteristically lively sound, a pleasure to hear.

The Water Tower Bucket Boys have been around for a good few years now, and their punchy take on folk has shared the stage with the likes of Frank Turner, Mumford and Sons and Old Crow Medicine Show.  Oregon-based, they tour incessantly (they have several UK dates coming up in August and September) and the lifestyle of a band on the road comes across in their songs, full of the restless energy of Cory Goldman’s bluegrass banjo picking.  It is a pleasure, then, to hear a group that are obviously a formidable force live sit back and relax in the studio.  Garrett Durant’s surreal, serene cover art captures the spirit perfectly; in WHERE THE CROW DON’T FLY the Bucket Boys let their softer folk roots show and flex the full range of their musicianship, harmonies emerging tenderly from beneath their usual energy.

Nowhere is this more true than in the first and last songs on the CD, the titular  ‘Meet Me Where the Crow Don’t Fly’ and the intimate ‘R Song’ which ends with a stand alone lyric ‘Don’t forget to move slow, dear’.  In between there is plenty of charm to be had.  A guest harmonica joins Josh Rabie’s fiddle in the melodic ‘Pilgrim Song’ and Goldman’s vocals, always tinged with rock, are broken by some impressive picking solos in ‘Easy Way Out’.  Overall though, it is their opening and closing tracks that do it for me.  These are full of depth and colour, whilst lyrics like ‘leaves sound like toast’ keep the hard sense of fun that makes these guys stand out from the crowd.  I will definitely be picking up their current album ‘Sole Kitchen’ and I can’t wait to see where their professed desire to ‘turn [their] genre upside down’ will take them from here. Katy Browse

www.watertowerbucketboys.com