SpiralEarth.co.uk reviews from 2011
Stories Of Angels & Guitars
Unhurried and warmly recorded, Patsy Matheson's new set of songs elevates her performances to a remarkable level. It takes a confident soul to leave an album as unadorned as this but the simplicity here is fundamental. Those who hunger for the sound of wood, strings and voice will want to dive right in. ...more
18/12/2011
Josh T Pearson - Rise, Bristol - Live Review
On his way to Exeter for the second performance of his brief European tour, Josh T. Pearson was kind enough to stop by at one of Bristol’s best loved music shops. Priding itself on being an independent oasis along Bristol’s fairly commercial triangle, ‘Rise’ seemed like the perfect setting for this stripped down gig. Standing amongst the records the event seemed organic and relaxed, everyone congregating simply to enjoy some good music. ...more
07/12/2011
Show of Hands – Weston –Super – Mare Playhouse Theatre Friday 25th November 2011
Few acts amongst the many that currently crowd the English folk scene are as able to attune a live performance to the variables of venue and audience as deftly as Show of Hands. Since a canvas-roof raising performance at WOMAD during the only warm weekend of August 2007 I have seen this band perform in such a diverse range of settings one might wonder what the demographic of their audience could possibly be. The unlikely list has encompassed a church, an art deco cinema turned opulent comedy club, an eighteenth century prison building and a cavernous West Country cathedral. On each occasion Show of Hands have demonstrated remarkable sensitivi...more
02/12/2011
The Woodbine and Ivy Band
The Woodbine and Ivy Band are going to score highly with those who revelled in the romanticism of Rob Young's Electric Eden. After reading that book it isn't much of a stretch to imagine this troupe taking off from Manchester on horse drawn carriage in search of singers and pastoral recording locations. ...more
30/11/2011
Night Fishing
Parts of this album may sound like they originated in a leafy suburb of Laural Canyon circa 1970 but the truth is they belong to modern day Runcorn and Andy Steele. Always the consummate songwriter, 'Night Fishing' possesses the polished craftsmanship many have come to expect from Andy but further digging is required to reveal the depth of work here. ...more
10/11/2011
In Times Back When
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Black Peak's impressive 'Tales We Might Know EP' was a surprise package in our Spiral Awards, finishing second for 'Best Debut'. Now, after a planned hiatus, comes their first album, 'In Times Back When'. Made up of Darren Black's sharply observed songs and Deborah's fiddle arrangements, further icing is supplied by multi-instrumentalist Chris Gatland. ...more
24/10/2011
David Francey - 'Late Edition' album launch
If David Francey is the kind of name which in the UK tends to generate hushed tones of reverence among songwriters and other initiates whilst perhaps not ringing as many bells of recognition as you might expect with the more general audience, this certainly appears not to be the case in his adopted home of Canada. Hugh’s Room, one of the bigger small listening rooms in Toronto, is packed tonight - and will be again tomorrow - for this two night album launch event that kicks off a 45-date Canadian tour for Francey and accompanists Chris Coole and Mark Westberg. There is an atmosphere of friendly respect and excitement which will dissolve into ...more
06/10/2011
Alone
A good song can have many lives with artist and listener finding new meaning when older material is revisited. Look no further than Suzanne Vega's trio of recent releases for an example. But 'Alone' from Eleanor McEvoy, which contains some of her best known songs, doesn't scream mature project. This album stems from Eleanor's need to not spend yet another night in a hotel room, mid-tour. Enquiries were made and Eleanor travelled to The Grange Studio in Norfolk, the location of many of her recording sessions. Once there, expecting a quiet night in the ground's accommodation she found herself in the studio singing her heart out....more
28/09/2011
Wriggle And Writhe
Tim Edey & Brendan Power have one of the richest musical dialogues on the live scene and it may surprise some that 'Wriggle And Writhe' is their debut. Those who have witnessed them in concert ripping into a set of virtuosic elegance will testify to the interlocking rhythms, spontaneous improvisation and vast repertoire, but it's all done with a difference: Tim is known in folk circles as a first rate multi-instrumentalist, specializing in Celtic sounds on button accordion and acoustic guitar; whereas Brendan is a harmonica player, in demand for his fluent skills across many genres. Not the most obvious meeting of instruments, but when you ch...more
17/09/2011
Ian Anderson live
St Georges hall has the uncanny feel of a place of worship, a large fresco with saints and angels behind the stage commands your attention, the wooden seats feel not unlike pews, and the pre show hush all add to the feeling of being in the wrong place. If it wasn't for the preponderance of men of a certain age wearing Jethro Tull t-shirts I would have been getting twitchy by now. ...more
15/09/2011
Moseley Folk Festival 2011: Sunday
Moseley Folk Festival is the best festival for those who aren’t into folk music....more
08/09/2011
Port Of Escape
Chris Ricketts ticks the right youth boxes - 2009 BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Award semi-finalist and has studied at the prestigious Folk and Traditional Music Degree course at Newcastle University - but youthful albums don't usually buzz with the assured performances found on 'Port Of Escape'....more
24/08/2011
Songs From The Barley Temple
Don't go searching for hidden gems from past decades when Folk Police Recordings are delivering the goods in 2011. Their latest offering is from Rapunzel & Sedayne whose new album, 'Songs From The Barley Temple', weaves it way through trad and original numbers with a soft intensity and a tidy amount of darkly disparate methodology. ...more
13/08/2011
Be Ready - Dennis Hopper Choppers
Ben Nichols at the age of twelve bought a stack of vinyl from the local library and '...immersed myself into the world of Big Bill Broonzy, Johnny Cash, Charlie Feathers, The Cramps, Sonny Burgess, Link Wray and a host of others that seemed to have come from a different planet'. His new album 'Be Ready' is a startling distillation of those influences, it is a delicious slice of old school blues rock fueled by vintage valve power and dry desert air. Throw in a dose of rockabilly and you have something pretty unique....more
02/08/2011
Cambridge 2011: Saturday & Sunday
The sun's out and it's time for two more whole days of music.... ...more
02/08/2011
Cambridge 2011: Thursday & Friday
The 2011 Cambridge Folk Festival got off to a fine start on Thursday night with a solid line up of music for the weekend, our first thoughts are below, but firstly what's new this year? Well a new small stage has been added called the Den, but largely the festival remains the same, giving it the comfortable familiarity of a favourite cardigan. Albeit one that has a smart phone in each pocket as they are going Twitter mad this year #cff11...more
30/07/2011
Black Mountain UFO
Peter Bruntnell's latest is a magic carpet ride of quietly psychedelic missives that will politely settle in your mind. This is what his fans have come to expect from the Devonian artist: meticulously crafted songs which defy categorization and expertly trigger unexpected memories and emotions....more
18/07/2011
Home Festival 2011 Review
Apparently there was some other festival on this weekend, but the surroundings at Home couldn’t be much more different. And that’s how the organisers intended it; Home was deliberately scheduled for the same weekend as its rather more famous counterpart. Set in the grounds of the Dartington estate in Devon, home of the ‘Dartington experiment’, where, according to their promotional material, 85 years ago, a Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst set up a “centre for educational, artistic and social experiment.” And it’s easy to see how that ethos is kept alive at this event. Drawing on acoustic and world music traditions, this second year of the festiva...more
28/06/2011
Live in Somerset
He's done it again, started an album with an unaccompanied song, just like Show Of Hands did on Arrogance, Ignorance and Greed. It's a bold move, a statement of this is it... this is Me...yet knightley has never been afraid of that and once again it works, at the end of the day it is all about the voice and Knightley has one of the best on the folk scene. Big and ballsy yet somehow deeply linked to the West Country, not by accent but by roots....more
27/06/2011
Merry-Go-Round
Jennifer Crook's voice and harp playing have gained her work from employers as diverse as the English National Opera and Snow Patrol, but it's a longing 'to join the ranks of struggling songwriters' which sparked the evolution of 'Merry-Go-Round'....more
24/06/2011
Pencaitland
A focus group would conclude that Southern Tenant Folk Union are currently stuck in the fast lane of creativity: no sooner have we digested 'The New Farming Scene' we're presented with 'Pencaitland' where songs 'centre around the transient nature of an utopian ideal'. Of course, interpretation depends on the individual, but rest assured, the group haven't gone all 'Floyd, the music remains exacting and the words principally pensive, and yet, the overriding feeling is of a freer quality to the composing and delivery. This is in no small part down to a more democratic approach, with five different songwriters and various vocalists making their ...more
14/06/2011
Lucky Devil
New Orleans conjures a whole dreamworld of musical images and connotations, the city itself seems to sweat jazz from its pores in the humid Southern sun. Meschiya Lake is astoundingly unsigned to a major label, despite being named Best Female Performer in the New Orleans Big Easy Music Awards. Lucky Devil is the debut album by Meschiya and the Little Big Horns, funded from the money made busking on the streets of New Orleans, watch the videos below and you will be bowled over by her voice I guarantee....more
01/06/2011
Highland Strathspeys For Fiddle
Currently resident in Oslo, Sarah-Jane Summers is probably best known for music of a Scandinavian persuasion, with her Hardanger fiddle under her chin and her academic knowledge of Norwegian folk music....more
18/05/2011
The Bite
'The Bite' takes up where Na-mara's previous collection left off with unpredictable gems aplenty gathered from the Celtic diaspora....more
12/04/2011
David Rotheray live
Tonight sees David Rotheray relaxing in the Louisiana, watching football, and happy to muse about his plans for another album which would retain 'a couple of the singers'. 'The Life Of Birds' project has been a triumph, and Jim Causley listens in hopeful anticipation, one suspects another round of BBC television and extensive touring would be very welcome. First up, though, David anticipates a holiday....more
01/04/2011
Levelling The Land
live at Manchester Academy, with support from The Wonderstuff, March 18...more
20/03/2011
Dumnonia
Jim Causley has a new album out called Dumnonia, which is a reference to a pre-Roman tribe based in the westcountry, and it's got a whopping 18 songs on it. The unifying force of this avalanche of riches, according to the sleeve notes, is that he set out to make a kind of Devon specific CD, although with the proviso that it's Devon as he sees it. This is a useful get-out clause, since there's a version of She Moves Through the Fair on there, which I think of as Irish, probably because the two versions I know best are by Cara Dillon and Sinead O'Connor....more
04/03/2011
16 miles
There's a beautiful William Blake couplet that opens a biography of Cecil Sharp by A H Fox Strangways: 'great things are done when men and mountains meet, this is not done by jostling in the street.' As Cecil Sharp, the English song-collector, discovered during trips to America, the inhabitants of the Southern Appalachians were still singing the traditional songs and ballads which their English and Scottish ancestors had brought out with them at the time of their emigration. Now, variants of these melodies fly around the globe quicker than the fastest Doc Watson lick. Jaywalkers have tapped into this rich heritage and serve up their o...more
27/02/2011
The Impossible Song & Other Songs
The second solo album from Roddy Woomble takes a slightly different tack from 'My Secret Is Silence' his debut solo album from a few years back. It is a bit less folk and much more wide ranging than that album, with his main band Idlewild on hiatus it seems to have freed his songwriting up to range across a whole landscape rather than being just a release for his songwriting that was more personal or just didn't fit the Idlewild box....more
23/02/2011
Pilgrims' Way
This new young trio seem set to be very busy across the Summer with about eighteen festival dates confirmed. Those bookings have been made on the strength of this EP, with just one listen it's obvious why any festival would want them on their stage. They manage to walk the line between Trad conformity and ripping up the rule book deceptively easily. ...more
18/02/2011
Oak Ash Thorn
For a fledgling label Folk Police Recordings have managed something extraordinary with this Peter Bellamy homage. Those who are aware of Bellamy's oeuvre will know his passion for Rudyard Kipling's poetry and here we have an album chock full of innovators contributing passionately invigorating interpretations which re-establish Oak Ash Thorn as a significant work....more
17/02/2011
Economy
Pete Morton has been on the folk scene for some years, the new album 'Economy' is his first CD of new songs for about three years. Aware of the limitations of a singer songwriter, that one man with a guitar approach, he has gone for a bigger sound with a producer and several other musicians, and it works just great. Morton has always written a polarised mix of songs that go from the comedic to intense, sometimes that can be rather disconcerting, on 'Economy' it works well....more
15/02/2011
Let England Shake
Polly Harvey has spent two years crafting the words to her eighth studio album, her intention that they should work as poetry before committing to song has resulted in a monumental work that turns her attention upon the country and land that she is from, she tackles some of the biggest issues that we face; war, conflict and the very concept of just what the English nation stands for. She stands as observer, witness and virtual war artist to the tangled world of conflict, politics and the emotional heart of a country. It is her most perfect album to date, capturing the confusion at the heart of being English, searching for an identity yet bein...more
13/02/2011
The Unicycle Set
This is the third collection of poetry from Burbridge, for anyone familiar with his work it is like stepping into familiar territory, raw, exposed and explicit but somehow deeply comforting at the same time. For new readers a glittering cave dedicated to the human condition awaits them. His lines of poetry tap right into the soul and transport the reader into a world populated with recurring characters alongside vignettes of humble moments layered with meaning....more
12/02/2011
Live at Perthshire Amber
Fowlis is surely the most accomplished and accessible Scots-Gaelic singer right now. For us poor non Gaelic speaking souls she does that miraculous thing the best singers do of drawing you into a song regardless of language barriers. ...more
10/02/2011
And Straight On Till Morning
Folk-rock is right up there with Jazz-rock for most maligned musical genre, however, Samson And Delilah proudly work under its banner with husband and wife team, Sam Lench and Anna Zweck, as their creative driving force. Now, having recruited several more personnel, their rustic dreamscapes just got bigger. ...more
03/02/2011
Jon Boden and the Remnant Kings
The first date on Jon Boden and the Remnant Kings' tour of 2011 was at the new Apex in Bury St Edmunds, a very impressive purpose built venue. Supporting Boden was the Fay Hield Trio, whose material tied in very nicely with John's extracts from his Folk Song a Day repertoire. The bulk of songs were from Jon's 'Songs From The Floodplain' album of 2009, as one of the best interpreters of traditional music in England he has inevitably allowed those songs to evolve and grow, and they sound wonderful....more
31/01/2011
Traiveller's Joy
It is nigh on impossible to listen to Emily Smith and not have your spirits raised, Traveller's Joy is probably the perfect Emily Smith album, lightly effervescent vocals and tunes that dart and weave around her like a clean and pure Highland stream. Smith has combined traditional with her own compositions as before, but here takes a more intimate and personal angle on her writing....more
29/01/2011
Driving Into The Blue
It's second nature for Kit Holmes to ping-pong from dynamic singer-songwriter mode to sophisticated guitar picker. It's what she's been doing for a while now with the musical backing of legendary bassist Danny Thompson as part of her studio team. And, there lies an issue, it's the sheer dynamic range of her talent that can set her adrift from easy categorization: a gifted square peg with a restless musical mind....more
11/01/2011
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