folk music
Kieron Tyler
Long winters, when most outdoor activities are off the menu, must encourage creativity. Judging by the new releases in from Scandinavia, almost-constant dark and sub sub-zero temperatures would do the music of more temperate regions some good, feeding inspiration. Whether it’s Norwegians with a yen for the spooky, irresistible accordionists and disturbing singer-songwriters from Finland, or do-it-yourself Danes, all and more are here.Amongst the aspects which make Scandinavia’s music striking, especially music from Norway, are songs which don’t initially reveal where they’re going. Twists and Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
It would be easy to begin with a reflection on how little the world has changed in the 100 years since the birth of Woody Guthrie; to draw parallels between the Great Depression and our own troubled economic times. Yet en route to last night's “Woody at 100” celebrations at Glasgow's Celtic Connections festival, I realised that to do so would constitute a disservice to undoubtedly one of the most important songwriters of the 20th century.For Guthrie’s centenary, his daughter Nora has once again opened up access to the thousands of uncompleted lyrics and writings curated by the Woody Guthrie Read more ...
mark.kidel
Folk music is about roots and place and while rootedness can provide a welcome balance to the vagaries of a virtual and globalised world, it can also raise some less salubrious spirits: the British folk movement expresses at times a folksy form of insularity, in which place or nation are made just a little too sacred and exclusive. The Cecil Sharp Project, which emerged out of a week of workshopping sponsored last year by the Shrewsbury Folk Festival, avoided these pitfalls with a great deal of deftness, a sense of irony as well as a dose of humour.The assembled musicians drew from the Read more ...
mark.kidel
The albums that work their way under your skin are few and far between. The second CD by Justin Vernon, aka Bon Iver, is one of those earworm-laden offerings that leave you wanting for more and haunted by seductive phrases and catchy tunes. There is something irresistible and addictive about the symphonic pop that Vernon has crafted as the follow-up to his crystalline exploration of lost love, For Emma, Forever Ago. While his first album – a demo he produced alone in a forest cabin – was a single-hued masterpiece of simplicity, Bon Iver is a tone poem of many colours, a segue of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Christmas albums are often a time to forget about the other 11 months of the year and get stuck into some festive silliness. Not for Kate Rusby. On this, her second volume of carols inspired by the South Yorkshire tradition, she’s still doggedly plying her trade, recasting some well-known and other unfamiliar Christmas melodies as simple hearth-side folk songs. The result may not be the sort of thing Jim Royle would open presents to, but it’s sure Christmassy in a soft, poignant and delicately beautiful way.While Mortals Sleep’s mix of folk, Yorkshire and Christmas is never better Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
That Alan Yentob gets around. I’ve run into him backstage during Jay Z's set at Glastonbury and in a jazz club in Poland, and here we found him in Rajasthan fronting a fascinating and well-shot programme, albeit workmanlike rather than really inspired, mostly set in one of the richest traditional music areas of India.Yentob (nicknamed Botney, which sounds like a furry robot) isn’t everyone’s cup of Bragg, and he isn’t that immediately likeable. Personally I prefer his lugubriousness to the overexcited and eager-to-please presenters TV bosses tend to go for. And he found the time to make a Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Kate Rusby’s Christmas show was a brilliant way to get that festive feeling. Standing on a stage lit by three huge glittering stars and a collection of colourful glowing baubles, she and her band (“the boys”) worked their way through a surprising and heartwarming selection of traditional carols, set to unusual tunes and with creative flare.The Barnsley Nightingale’s version of “While Shepherd’s Watch their Flock by Night” was set to the tune of “On Ilkley Moor Bar T'at”. It was extraordinary. She sang “And this shall be the sign” instead of the bar t’at bit. At every introduction of a new Read more ...
Tim Cumming
I’m stood in the dusk in front of the tomb of Sheikh Hamid al-Nil as the sun sets on Khartoum, reddening in the exhaust-filled air as it deflates over a receding jumble of low-rise blocks spreading down the banks of the Nile and out towards Tuti Island, where the waters of the Blue and White Nile meet. This is no quaint, picturesque view, though you do feel you're in some ancient theatre of humanity when you land in Khartoum.The voice of a Koranic singer billows and froths from the PA and speakers studded around the conical cream-and-green tower of the mosque, and a crowd of several Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“It’s very deep, very private and full of love,” said Art Garfunkel of his relationship with Paul Simon. So private that for this examination of their swansong 1970 album Bridge Over Troubled Water the pair were interviewed apart, despite both being credited as executive producers. Whatever the nature of the love, 40-plus years on, bridges weren’t being built.Paul Simon didn’t seem too enthusiastic about revisiting his past. One of the few times a smile flashed across his face was when he recalled the journey he used to make to buy records by The Everly Brothers. Discussing the Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Not only could Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon not have planned the success of his first album; if he’d known he probably wouldn’t have wanted it. The fragile bucolic sound he produced in his Wisconsin cabin became so iconic it must have been impossible to know where to go. After the next record came out some complained that it sounded just like the first album only played on a Casio keyboard. So when support act Kathleen Edwards announced last night that Bon Iver was “going to blow your panties off”, I was, frankly, sceptical. Boy, was I wrong.I doubt there’s ever been an album that’s evolved so Read more ...
matilda.battersby
Saturnine means to be hard, impermeable, gloomy and dull. Thudding, even. The word quite literally means to be like lead. It is an odd choice of album title for a record which is none of those things. Jackie Oates’s fourth studio album is, in fact, a collection of songs forged in traditional foundries (if we’re going in for metallic analogies) - lyrics pinched from anthologies of ancient peasant ditties; tunes passed on orally or reclaimed by Oates and her confederate folkies with skills passed down through the generations. Lead might be more malleable than other metals, but the material this Read more ...
matilda.battersby
It was the invasion of the collapsible chairs at this year’s Co-operative Cambridge Folk Festival. From above it appeared that an army of extremely well-equipped picnickers was staking its claim on the quarter of a mile surrounding the main stage using only fold-up chairs, checked blankets and pints of cider, occasionally lobbing colourful balloon missiles into the air. To call it civilised would be an understatement. It was quite simply extraordinary how far people had gone in pursuit of convenience. Those of us poor sods who sat on the floor could barely see for the sea of green canvas Read more ...