The Line Of Best Fit

I'm thrilled to report that I have joined independent online music magazine The Line Of Best Fit and my first piece for the site, a review of Emily Smith's new album 'Traiveller's Joy', is available to read here.

10 from '10

This is most definitely not an albums-of-the-year thing, as no-one's asked and I'm not quite so self-important! Plus, given that it seems to be illegal not to rate The National's grandiose and shimmering High Violet top, there wouldn't be much point. Nevertheless here are ten records not reviewed on this blog that I'd suggest seeking out - if not before midnight then ASAP next year.

Chumbawamba - ABCDEFG (No Masters)
With trademark wit and harmonies, the mighty Chumbawamba's "meta-album" on the subject of music is another treasury of engrossing titbits and stories. Singing about George Melly, James Hetfield and Richard Wagner, the band (now on sabbatical until the summer) are unafraid to cast a wide net. ABCDEFG delivers catchy and captivating songs.

Beach House - Teen Dream (Bella Union)
Victoria Legrand's sultry vocals hold the interest over wintry, minimalist melodies, as the Baltimore dream-pop duo generate light-touch gravitas that is coldly sober and prettily heady. The nuanced Teen Dream has not been overhyped.

Ruarri Joseph - Shoulder to the Wheel (Pip Productions)
For someone so obviously influenced by Bob Dylan, Ruarri Joseph carries the tag with ease. Vocals, guitar and harmonica craft mature, thoughtful, maybe even commercial songs - and Shoulder to the Wheel contains just enough gems to be a thoroughly rewarding listen. One to watch, and support.

Band of Horses - Infinite Arms (Columbia)
Factory was an early shout for single of the year; and though unsurpassed by the remainder of the record, is by no means out of place on the Horses' slickest set yet. Balancing the anthemic with the intimate, delivering winning harmonies and hummable melodies this is inspired summer alt. rock.

Musée Mécanique - Hold This Ghost (Souterrain Transmissions)
Named for a penny arcade museum in San Fransisco, Musée Mécanique produce meditative music on their refined debut: sorrowful, otherworldly, delicate and introspective. It is also comforting and calming - gentle hope brightening the haze with flecks of cheer. Their lilting laments form an impressive and promising first album.

Laura Veirs - July Flame (Bella Union)
July Flame is a simple but glittering record, capable of exquisite beauty. Veirs is accumulating quite a catalogue of impressively consistent records - and this is as fine and worthy an introduction as anything before.

Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can (Virgin)
Rambling Man earned Marling a first Folk Award nomination and is the stand-out song from the Berkshire-based singer-songwriter's stronger second release. Spirited, literate and determined, this is a stoical, steely and very accomplished album.

Jenny & Johnny - I'm Having Fun Now (Warner Bros.)
I should declare that Rabbit Fur Coat was one of my albums of the last decade, so it is hardly unexpected that Jenny Lewis's latest venture, with boyfriend Johnathan Rice, so delights. Equally, there should be no surprise at her proficiency in making music with a partner, remembering Rilo Kiley. Whatever, this is a collaboration of rock n roll sensibility, indie tinge and pop delivery. Infectious, engaging, just lovely.

The Burns Unit - Side Show (Proper)
An eight-piece Scots-Canadian collaboration between luminaries including Karine Polwart, King Creosote and ex-Delgado Emma Pollock might have struggled to total anything approaching the sum of its parts. Fortunately and skilfully, despite disparate backgrounds and a diverse set of songs, the textures are so well woven that the album is surprisingly seamless. "Supergroup" billing is as unavoidable as it is unenviable but creditably, Burns Unit never threaten to disappoint - and Side Show should have been centre of attention.

Robert Plant & Band of Joy - Band of Joy (Decca)
Backed by a line-up including Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin, Plant's latest release means he has contributed to albums charting across six different decades - but what's more impressive is his enduring credibility through more phases than the moon. His Led Zep past is brilliantly irrelevant to Band of Joy, (in one sense because the original incarnation of the group formed before his collaboration with Page) but mainly because this album, like Grammy-guzzling Raising Sand before it, is bigger than albatrosses and pedestals. The Alison Krauss duets were exquisite and Band of Joy echoes the spirit and the sound - but Plant is master of dodging his own shadow. Band of Joy is a great album all in its own right.

Festive Folk

This week's blog post was intended to carry details of the latest Magpie Lane Christmas gig in Oxford last weekend but, although the performance went ahead, roads were snowed on and buses snowed off. Tales of wassails will thus have to wait for another time but in lieu of a review I thought we could rely on the web to provide a little festive goodwill.

Anyone searching for a last minute present - or just relief from the standard Christmas soundtrack (turkeys and crackers alike) - could do much worse than picking up both For Folk's Sake it's Christmas (for £1+ here) and The Line of Best Fit's second Ho! Ho! Ho! Canada album (a double album in fact, available for free download here). Both are hoping to raise money for good causes - for more details click on the links.

A few artists are playing Santa this year, starting with former RaW Folk interviewee Tamara Schlesinger & her band 6 Day Riot who offer, gratis, a faithful interpretation of The Pretenders' 2000 Miles - download now from their website. A wintry cover of The Coldest Night of the Year, originally recorded by 1960s duo Twice as Much with Vashti Bunyan, is available from Mary Epworth & Adapter Adapter via Epworth's Soundcloud page, while a reduced three-track version of KT Tunstall's 2007 Christmas covers EP is being offered on the house at the Amazon UK MP3 store. Baltimore's Beach House are also spreading seasonal cheer (sort of) - new song I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun can be downloaded free of charge here.

Karine Polwart's charmingly mellow and rather unlikely version of Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody, recorded for a BBC Radio 2 programme being broadcast tonight, meets with Noddy Holder's approval and is well worth a listen, although you do have to shell out 79p for this one. Humbug! Lastly, a word for Mark Lamarr's final God's Jukebox show, following the alternative carols on Radio 2: listen.

Merry Christmas - and check back soon for an arbitrary year-ending list. Hooray!

Review: Kate Rusby - Make the Light

It seems churlish, not to say a touch presumptuous, to criticise an artist for loitering in their comfort zone. Kate Rusby has made consistently lovely albums during a decade of personal ups and downs, establishing herself as a herald of folk tradition's transition back into national (sub)consciousness. She might be best known for covering the Kinks on an axed sitcom's titles - but who else has sung Elfin Knight on prime time BBC1?

This reservation notwithstanding, Make the Light is a little bit frustrating. For the first time, the album omits to include any traditional material, crediting Jam & Jerusalem scribe Jennifer Saunders for this 'good plan!' in the liner notes. So far, so fair enough, because Rusby adjusts to a full singer/songwriter role without breaking stride. Her albums have always contained original compositions so the shift itself is unremarkable and while adding charming material to a goodly repertoire, nothing new is achieved. Her flirtations with imitative faux-tradition are as pretty as hilltop follies - and perhaps as inessential as they are impressive.

However, chirpy first track The Wishing Wife - a case in point, and cousin to Awkward Annie's eponymous opener - is one of the highlights, alongside Walk the Road (a bucolic duet with spouse and strummer Damien O'Kane) and the cello-embellished Shout to the Devil, which leave lasting impressions. Unfortunately, there is something self-derivative about some of the songs that saps from Rusby's vocal purity and the proficiency of an all-new supporting cast. That this album is somehow less diverting than its predecessors means the desire for further variation is never sated.

What does differ is the tone of contentment overcoming the mournful - but this does little to shake things up, as a series of sedate songs ease unhurriedly to the album's close. Early on, Let Them Fly finds Rusby unusually political (or at least venting anger towards an anonymous politician) and her cutting gibes sting despite their unknown focus, if only for the ease of the target and her mildness elsewhere. Only Hope and Green Fields might be lullabies, intimate and soothing, while Four Stars is an elegant love song. Yet despite a subtle tension between snug security and struggle, Make the Light is ultimately just a nice record, ingrained with both the amiability and slight triteness that implies. If Rusby has plateaued, at least she's picked a beauty spot.

Review: The Bad Shepherds - By Hook or By Crook

Second time around, Ade Edmondson and his fellow herdsmen are just as sure and fleet of foot as before, exuding a quiet confidence and sophistication as they reconstruct another set of punk and new wave classics interwoven with traditional tunes. As has been noted, the presence of Troy Donockley and Andy Dinan is pivotal and demands the band serious attention - but Edmondson is no mere flashy figurehead, adding able mandolin as well as measured vocals. The Bad Shepherds are not interested in parody, nor an aging actor's vanity project - he again delivers a thought-provoking, not provocative, performance throughout.

By Hook or By Crook starts in much the same vane as Yan, Tyan, Tethera Methera! with a lone, low, buzzing note heralding an oblique approach to choice slices of rock rebellion and social commentary. Among the finest moments from the first album were those that brought out aching, heart-melting pathos - like a harrowing Down in the Tube Station at Midnight or the quiet nostalgia of Squeeze's Up the Junction - but they were complemented by the apocalyptic London Calling, sardonically rebellious God Save the Queen and joyous escapades like Teenage Kicks morphing into Whiskey in the Jar. Here, the Sound of the Suburbs is pared back to its central parochial poignancy, with lovely vulnerable fades; Anarchy in the UK is melancholy, a post-traumatic pipe mewling desolately over building urgency and all the more threatening for Edmondson's portrayal of mellow, checked psychosis. Others, however, just sound emasculated, like a tenderly plodding cover of Ever Fallen in Love. A similar impression is attained with Motorhead's Ace of Spades, which, shorn of a brash, bragging attitude, exposes the hollowness of swagger. It isn't fatalistic or urgent enough though, so the lyrics become rambling; their wistful take on Buzzcocks' best known hit loses the raw passive-aggression, impulsiveness and epiphany. Then again, whether teenage edge would seem convincing from a fifty-something ex-Young One is debatable, so perhaps the wisest course was chosen.

The splendid stand-out is White Riot, displaying zeal, flair and delicious instrumentation that really lifts the tempo. Our familiarity with the much covered track listing adds to the anticipation and indeed delight but is impressively little encumbrance, particularly skillful where other reinterpretations vie to be most inventive. In particular, several of the Bad Shepherds' selections have been previously restyled (and splendidly so) by Nouvelle Vague - but these incarnations are sufficiently dissimilar to avoid distraction or detraction. Resisting a hell-for-leather approach ensures Edmondson, Donockley and Dinan cannot be pigeonholed as a frivolous novelty folk trio (succeeding in showing sophistication beyond, for example, the Hayseed Dixie approach) and if, settled in style, they fall into their own novel niche, it matters not. The album is a great listen and improving with every airing.

Review: 3 Daft Monkeys - The Antiquated & The Arcane

Proudly independent, sporting a mean fiddler and exuding world influences inflected with glee, 3 Daft Monkeys are an attractive proposition. Likewise, new album The Antiquated & The Arcane, title inspired by a Cornish historical society, offers appetising fare, a medley of the raw and the ornate, the pacy and the idling, the obvious and the obscure.

Yet despite insistent, infectious vivacity from the title track that opens the album to the swelling closing chorus of platitudinous swan song Love Life, it is enjoyable without being instantly enchanting. Perhaps because of the showiness and self-referencing, their insistence sometimes seems insincere but this would be an unfair impression. Nevertheless, like a bumptious buffet host whose tries at conviviality become trying, 3DM offer a feast but fail to nourish. What's particularly peculiar about this is that they serve up proper nosh, not hauteur haute cuisine.

Under One Sun is a great folk-pop song, full of stabs and swells and la-las. Doors of Perception takes on a medieval minstrel mood between drowsy, lilting choruses and Love (sic) Fool is a fun percussive binge, replete with dub beat, a xylophone line and echoey, explosive bangs. What should sound messy produces a melting pot as endearing as it can be clamorous, divergence typified by the polished She Said that treads a tightrope between zeal and superficiality, too repetitive to build true atmospheric tension. It is the subtler touches, like the deadened, melancholy piano coda concluding Days of the Dance that provide the real depth.

The album is swept along by the trio's evident musicality, mastery of the catchy chorus and flaunting of joyous flourishes. Although 3 Daft Monkeys don't do the carnival underworld theatrics as well as Bellowhead, for example, their combination of mythologised autobiography, pervasively entertaining arrangements and gleeful playing pulls off songs like Civilised Debauchery and Perfect Stranger with dash and deftness. The Antiquated & The Arcane is delightfully played, well-produced and cleverly varnished but though buffed and boisterous, needs bolstering by something stouter. The inclusion of a couple of traditional folk tales would add another dimension to the thrust.

Gig Review: Show of Hands - Spires & Beams Tour, Oxford 12/11/2010

Steve Knightley and Phil Beer have amassed quite a catalogue of signature songs among their considerable canon after almost twenty years together as Show of Hands. Greeting the audience for the penultimate gig of their second 'Spires & Beams' tour around English churches and cathedrals, Knightley explained that lightweight numbers had been edited from the set list in favour of the more thoughtful. Ably assisted by Miranda Sykes, the duo duly delivered slower, contemplative pieces such as Sydney Carter song The Crow on the Cradle and the moving Santiago, interspersed with genial patter and the occasional singalong. In fact, there was some conservatism in the selections - ducking Evolution was understandable but a lost opportunity for a little harmless subversiveness. During the acerbic Arrogance Ignorance and Greed, Knightley altered a lyric: 'Dear God I hope you choke', presumably deemed an unbecoming wish in His house, became 'So friend...'. Atmospherically, however, the ecclesiastical setting seemed something of a red herring. St Aldates has a very modern feel (it was remodeled in the 1990s) and is not much bigger than your average school hall; the acoustics were excellent but not remarkable and it was quite possible to forget where you were.

One-time Wintersetter and now BBC Folk Award-winning solo artist Jackie Oates opened proceedings with an eclectic assortment of material including a tune composed at Wigan Parish Church a week before. Billed as a special guest, she seemed to enjoy the freedom to experiment afforded by a solo support slot, playing kantele and shruti and shunning some of the songs with which she is most associated. Oates plays and sings with a delicacy that offsets a fascination with blackness and bleakness exemplified by Past Caring, introduced as 'the most miserable song in the world', where the desolation was most human and raw. Mournfulness morphed to menace elsewhere and the set twisted to a sinister finish in the obsessional form of reworked nursery rhyme Lavenders Blue. It was a subtly clever but slightly underwhelming end to a splendid set that showcased Oates' obvious eminence on fiddle and vocals, most enjoyably on an accomplished rendition of Fourpence a Day.

After an interval Steve Knightley heralded the main event with The Preacher, performed from the floor and embellished by the distant echoing of a tolling bell, a masterful touch in an instantly captivating rendition. Phil Beer followed with the equally powerful and lonesome The Blind Fiddler, both adept adverts for respective solo tours scheduled for February. The duo have been accompanied by Sykes on bass and backing vocals since 2004 and the familiarity showed as they broke straight into the main set with accomplished ease and expertise.

Show of Hands are holistic showmen and made great use of the space in marrying grandness with intimacy. Simple lighting added to their stagecraft, with darkness drowning whispered outro to The Dive and the platform flushing red for the bass and bale of Innocents' Song. Beer's foreboding depiction of Herod 'walking out of the Christmas flame' followed a duet between Knightley and a returning Jackie Oates, on The Keys of Canterbury. Her vocals adorn the album version, sung as a straighter duet but here it was an ethereal call-and-response courtship, Knightley singing unaccompanied at the front with Oates, fiddle in hand, treading the aisle towards him, all silhouetted before a deep blue uplit arch. If this was the finest moment of the evening (and it certainly achieved the largest applause, save for a prolonged and slightly awkward semi-standing ovation before the encore) - it would be unfair on the faultless Beer and Sykes - but nothing else was quite as hypnotic.

Importantly, the evening was split between the spiritual and temporal, Knightley musing on the Chilean miners' rescue adding new poignancy to Santiago and The Dive and adding a line about the coming cuts and redundancies to AIG. Their unlikely cover of Don Henley's Boys of Summer, suiting an out-of-season autumnal malaise, was also special and highlighted their effortless musicianship. Given only two tracks were taken from the last album, it was a shame that staple favourites Roots and Country Life were both omitted (even from the encore) but that back catalogue offers such fine pickings it was terrific to hear something different.

Set Lists

Jackie Oates
Brigg Fair
Smugglers Bay
Goodbye To Beesands and To Magic / Wigan Parish Church / Tansys Golowan
Fourpence a Day
[Icelandic Sea Hymn]
Past Caring
Lavenders Blue

Show of Hands with Miranda Sykes
The Preacher [Steve Knightley]
The Blind Fiddler [Phil Beer]
The Train / Blackwaterside
The Crow on the Cradle
Cousin Jack
Arrogance Ignorance and Greed
The Dive
The Blue Cockade
Keys of Canterbury [Steve Knightley and Jackie Oates]
Innocents' Song [Phil Beer and Miranda Sykes]
Boys of Summer
Now You Know
Santiago
Encore: Pleasant and Delightful (The larks they sang melodious)

Review: Martyn Joseph - Under Lemonade Skies

'Martyn wants to move heaven and earth', declares the biography on martynjoseph.com, before noting such critical acclaim as to 'make any publicist purr with pleasure'. Fortunate then that Martyn considers such praise only in an 'almost incidental kind of way', because, almost incidentally, I'm about to add to it.

In fact, such hyperbole should be forgiven about an artist who is so unfairly unfamiliar to many. Now 50, Penarth-born Joseph's first records were released in the mid-1980s; since then his career has taken in a major label contract, a collaboration with Tom Robinson and Steve Knightley and an anthem for last month's Ryder Cup, the first to be played in Wales. His latest accomplishment is Under Lemonade Skies, an accessible album with an unstuffy sound that delivers customary conviction, adorned by skillfully textured acoustic guitar that elevates this effort. Where previous releases have tended towards earnest tenacity and weighty angst, here a nuanced Joseph blends passion and compassion on an album of gentle profundity that is given room to breathe.

Indeed, the album launches in upbeat style on shimmering first song Always Will Be, ascending to open skies that cloud over a touch in the balmy melancholy of So Many Lies, before Joseph heads heavenward on track three. Faith is the staple subject of Joseph's work and threads through the album, his depth of conviction complemented by a lightness of touch. Joseph's expression and spirituality are subtly eloquent, elegant and never glib. His affirmations are intimate, mesmerising and laudably unhampered by clumsy evangelism.

The album's centrepiece - and what was its working title track - is Lonely Like America, a sprawling modern folk song of 'pioneers and racketeers', contrast and contradiction, an ode to a failed promised land. What follows is less distinct, including the overlong On My Way, saved by a vocal performance evoking Knopfler and Springsteen. By the end, some of the fizz has escaped but this is for the most part a sparkling record.

Review: Belshazzar's Feast - Find the Lady

It's a busy few months for instrumentalist and singer Paul Sartin of Bellowhead and Belshazzar's Feast - the duo's latest release follows hard upon Hedonism and two tours follow. Find the Lady is an intriguing album, produced by Jim Moray who belies his own albums' avant-gardism with a broadly conservative production here. Deprived of dancers and audience interplay, Sartin and Paul Hutchinson (who has his own side project in three-piece Hoover the Dog) exhibit their eminence sincerely on an accomplished album of (mostly) traditional music.

Sartin's ancestors' sang for the Hammond Brothers, song-collecting contacts of Cecil Sharp. One of these ballads - the stately Turtle Dove - is performed with particular gravity to an engaging arrangement, while the instrumental tunes are as absorbingly delivered (try the splendid Bloomsbury Market/Hypermarket). Moray and additional guests Jackie Oates and Pete Flood add subtle contributions to the well-orchestrated set, with Sartin alternating on fiddle and oboe to accompany Hutchinson's ever-present accordion.

There is thus much to muse about even before the interruption of knowingly silly Primus Hornpipe, featuring a succession of "guest" cloggers, à la The Intro and the Outro. Breaking the reverie for revelry is not a bad idea and I smiled in spite of myself at wryly wrought references (My Old Man, anyone?); such whimsy is later lacking from the promisingly titled Circle of Biscuits that alas proves rather more dull. Courtly Royal Flush / Elephant Stairs injects late élan ahead of the atmospheric, ambitious final track, a rendition of the evocative poem Home Lad, Home. Find the Lady perhaps wants for a bit of gristle - and I'm not sure the two Pauls quite manage to stamp their personality right through the record - but this is a well-balanced and affecting album of craftsmanship and enthusiasm.

Review: The Bees - Every Step's A Yes

OK, not folk. I know. Forgive me, for I cannot resist this band. Every Step's a Yes, the Isle of Wight based Bees' first release since early 2007, doesn't put a foot wrong. Produced by front man and multi-instrumentalist Paul Butler, this is an understated, mature, intimate album, more considered than predecessor Octopus with more saunter than swagger.

Immaculate opener I Really Need Love does hint at the Bees of old, sashaying jauntily beneath Butler's fervently yearning vocals, and the ambience is again suffused with a soulful, psychedelic sixties sound. However, this record is a mellow affair, more experimental in instrumentation than composition. The aim, says bassist Aaron Fletcher, was to create 'universal songs', but the result is nothing so bland. Effortlessly fluent throughout, a sophisticated succession of introspective, delicately written, brightly tranquil tracks is broken only by samba-infused, spirited rollick that closes the album and comes closest to emulating anarchic back catalogue cousins.

On Every Step's a Yes the band immediately find their groove and, being The Bees, are far too classy to let that groove become a rut. Winter Rose's riff and percussion are fabulously atmospheric, the emotional No More Excuses understatedly stirring and Pressure Makes me Lazy shimmers to a railway rhythm. It's a moreish medley that skips between styles and, although lacking instant infectiousness, offers unhurried, fuzzy warmth. Unpretentious and intrinsically cheering, no Bees album ever outstays its welcome: the latest effort is ephemeral bliss.