Salut! Live

Blessed Brian and Bliss

It happened last year, so no surprise that it has happened again. Votes are cast, lists compiled, the year's best CDs chosen (best as in the best I've heard, on a purely subjective judgement, for those uncomfortable with the word). And then the doubts creep in. Should Graham and Eileen Pratt have been somewhere in any list of 10? Probably, but there's a limit to how many albums you can put in joint 10th just to fit more in. And what about Tom Bliss (above) and Brian Peters? Read on.....

Tom Bliss The Whisper (Slipjig)

Years ago, my wife, who is French, would travel home from work by a tortuous route that covered much of County Durham. It started with a lift from Shildon to Chester-le-Street (not passing Pity Me, but that's another story), and continued with at least one bus on to Stanley and finally to Hobson (where we lived, though not necessarily by choice). One evening, the bus that normally said "Stanley" said "No Place" instead. I leave it to the reader's imagination to think about the kind of conversation that ensued between young French lass and grumpy north-west Durham bus conductor.

What our ancestors chose to call some of the small towns and villages of England is a joy to behold. I used to opt for the A1 for journeys back north at least partly because the exits offered a higher standard of place name than the M1.

Tom Bliss was gripped by similar thoughts as he drove up and down the country smiling at the signposts as they flashed by. One in particular, pointing the way towards the Oxfordshire villages of Mixbury and Evenly, read to him rather like an extract from a Chaucerian cookbook.

With his highly developed imagination and sense of fun, Bliss proceeded not to those villages but to the pages of a good gazetteer, dug out a long list of candidates and turned his own amusement into a splendid poem in which dozens of place names are arranged to form the ingredients and instructions of a wonderful recipe.

If The Whisper contained nothing else, it would be worth the entrance fee of whatever the CD costs. In fact, there is much, much more, from the strident marching beat of Sound the Drum to the understated beauty of The Sin of Mary Prout, a Victorian mum driven by post-natal depression, which no court then recognised, to kill her baby daughter.

If you like intelligent songs, handsomely sung and accompanied, pleasant instrumental pieces and the dry humour of a natural stand-up comic with perfect timing, this may well be the one to spend that unused Christmas voucher on.

Best folk track of the year? Step forward Cara Dillon

No sooner had I voted in the BBC Folk Awards for Bellowhead's Fakenham Fair as my traditional track of the year, and Eliza Carthy's Mr Magnifico in the contemporary category, than along comes something that knocks spots off both of them.

I am talking about Spencer the Rover, which appears on Cara Dillon's outstanding new album, Hill of Thieves, on her own Charcoal label.

Chris Foster: hot stuff from Iceland to the desert

Picture: Tyler Cartner

Chris Foster Outsiders (Green Man Productions)

If Maddy Prior's new album took me back to an encounter on the fringes of a folk club, Chris Foster succeeds in dragging me inside - even if his CD is called Outsiders.

It is as if he has been asked to sit down and compile the running order of the quintessential set for a solo folk performer of the thoughtful rather than showman kind. Anger, defiance, humour, love, social history...you'll find all of that and more.

Maddy Prior: in delightfully rude voice

Salut! Live announces the return of something like a proper service..... reviews are important to a site like this, but remember always that the writer claims to be no more than a fan with a platform. First up is Maddy Prior. Coming soon: Chris Foster ....and something special, though not a review, relating to Sandy Denny...

And if you've strayed in here as a result of reading about the competition at Mudcat or Talkawhile, be assured that a comment posted here will count as an entry. For my non-Mudcat/Talkawhile readers, all you need to do is let me have your best, warmest, wittiest Maddy or Steeleye Span anecdote, reminiscence, thought (some great ones already appear at Mudcat, and another can be found here, in the comments). The three I judge to be the best will receive copies of Maddy's albums signed by her....

STOP PRESS: THE DEADLINE FOR ENTRIES, WHETHER POSTED HERE OR AT MUDCAT OR TALKAWHILE IS MIDNIGHT - UK TIME - on SATURDAY OCT 11

Maddy Prior* Seven For Old England (Park Records)

The folk club was not due to open for an hour or more. It was so early that I could not imagine anyone else being there before me.

As I wandered, pint in hand, into the small downstairs room of the Golden Cock in Darlington, a young woman was sitting there reading a book. She had a right to be feeling quite cross, but showed no trace of anger. Maddy Prior had been exiled to the snug because the main bar was still, in those far-off days, the preserve of men.

Three cheers for Eliza: great music, guts and words

Eliza Carthy Dreams of Breathing Underwater (Topic)
Seth Lakeman Poor Man's Heaven (Relentless)

For the past two weeks, I have been listening a lot to the two controversial albums listed above (both pictures courtesy of Roger Liptrot's Folk Images collection) .

Controversial? Yes, in the sense that a good proportion of folkies give a convincing impression of being by nature the most reactionary creatures on earth.

When someone claimed as "one of ours" strays from the straight and narrow path of purity (and, some would cry, poverty), the backlash is biting. No matter what dues the individuals have paid to folk; their duty, for some, is to avoid at all cost the temptation to become popular, or even different.

The guitar riff that introduces Eliza's new CD might have escaped from a Stones record. I can easily imagine a number of fellow folkies foaming at the mouth at such betrayal. By the time they reach the second track, with the opening line "Marianne Faithfull sings a song about a boy....", they will presumably be reaching for sedatives.

And I think it's delicious. I have paid my own dues to a form of purism, expressing the view that Eliza Carthy at her best is, or was, Eliza Carthy singing North Country Maid unaccompanied. But I have found it entirely possible to admire and enjoy the various meandering routes she has taken in music, routes that keep her interested, make it more likely that she can earn a living and add greatly to the sum and substance of modern English music.

But rather than rattle on for a few more paragraphs about the merits of the album, let me allow Eliza herself room to articulate - extremely well, despite the late burst of self-deprecation - her own thoughts on the questions that arise. She is talking about Seth Lakeman:

Karine Polwart. Honestly!

Karine Polwart This Earthly Spell (Hegri)

It started as just the name, Karine Polwart, listed among others in Salut! Live's Coming Soon list of items expected to be posted in the near future. From memory, the "others" included Marie Little, Graham and Eileen Pratt, Leon Rosselson and Cora Smyth. You may have noticed that reviews of albums by the last three, and an interview with Marie, have been up here for a little while.

As each of those other articles was posted, the name was deleted from the list. Until there was only Karine's.

False promise? Not a bit of it. And when Salut! Live was assured that the very busy Ms Polwart was on the point of delivering the answers to our interview questions - I am in the Middle East and she, of course, isn't; face-to-face chats are impossible, long phone conversations beyond our meagre resources - the pledge was beefed up to read: Karine Polwart. Honestly!

Watch this space, or one near it. The honesty refers at this stage to my intentions, and Karine's willingness - time permitting - to respond. I am sure, however, that it will be translated into action. Not soon enough for my liking, though, and not soon enough to fit my original plan to run a review of This Earthly Spell at the same time as the interview.

But the delay has one highly positive consequence. What would have been a quietly appreciative but hardly rapturous review, say a month, ago is now going to be a corker.

Cora Smyth's efficacious prescription

Cora Smyth Are We There Yet? (Claddagh)

You can just imagine the conversation in the Smyth family household, say 15 years ago.

The two sisters, Cora and Breda, are spending altogether too much time practising on their fiddles and whistles, not enough on their biology homework.

"But all we want to do is play music," the girls chorus, only for their parents, for all their own love of traditional Irish sounds, to retort: "Music's all very well, but it's not going to put bread on the table. You have to get some real qualifications behind you, and proper jobs."

If any exchanges of the sort ever happened, it would explain why the sisters went on to qualify in medicine. But it certainly didn't stop them making music. Girls being better at multi-functioning than boys, I'd wager that they simply took it all in their stride.

And Cora Smyth's new album Are We There Yet? gives cause for celebration that however conscientiously she followed her studies, the music was never sidelined.

Not another Irish fiddle album, I hear some saying. And if I am to be honest, the thought occurred to me, too.
But I am delighted to report that this one has quality and spark in such abundance that Irish fiddle album is a pretty inadequate description.

Produced by Smyth's husband Sean Horsman, it has all sorts of influences - "from blues, funk, Dixieland, gypsy jazz and Latin via Manchester and Co Mayo," it says on the tin - and just about everything you'd want in an instrumental set: virtuosity, changes of pace and mood, innovation and fun.

There is an occasional lapse into easy listening muzak, but I instantly forgive her this blemish each time I come across the lilting beauty of Banyuls.

And the rest is so good in any case that after 10 years of touring with the Michael Flatley and his shows, Smyth has established herself, with one solo(ish) record, as a force in Irish music. She has also performed a service she is unlikely to have envisaged.

The beauty of English

Ducking the verbal bullets from snipers over at the UK Music Folk discussion group, I felt the need for a reminder of how wonderful a language English can be.

If I had brought the album with me to the Middle East, I might have put on the Tony Benn speech to Parliament about the destruction of the coalmining industry, a model of elegant rhetoric made all the more stirring by the addition of music from the Grimethorpe Colliery Band.

Or I could have chosen, in a similar vein, the sequence of the film Brassed Off (which also featured Grimethorpe) that has Pete Postlethwaite's marvellous Albert Hall speech. In another place, I reported that the scene was recorded in a single take and the cast and crew in tears. My prized video of the film also rests in another continent.

So I turned instead to Graham and Eileen Pratt and Leon Rosselson.

Let me begin with the Pratts and their new album, The Greek King's Daughter on their own Grail label:

There can be few finer ways of experiencing the beauty of English than to listen to Eileen Pratt's singing. I have had the pleasure of hearing her at the folk clubs she and her husband visited in the West Country when I lived in Bristol, and it has occasionally struck me that she is one of those great singers best heard in live performance. For once, however, the studio production is a match for her natural gifts.

One of my first actions on receiving a new Graham and Eileen Pratt album is to head smartly for what I shall call the big Eileen ballads. Three stand out here: Donal Og, which inspired the album title, Lass of Glenshee and - not its first outing - the glorious Lark in the Clear Air. I could listen to them over and over again; indeed, I do.

But the pleasures of listening do not end with the purity and power of Eileen's voice applied to such demanding songs, and Graham's contributions - yes, the exemplary musicianship (guitar, harmonium and concertina), but also as a singer - should not be overlooked. Bright Morning Star showcases the couple's command of harmonies, but in truth there is no hint of a weak spot.

From start to finish, the album has all the fuel and distraction I need to get me painlessly through the Abu Dhabi traffic. The Pratts have not been especially active in the studios of late, at any rate as a couple (there has been a series of CDs with their choir, the Sheffield Folk Chorale), but they have managed to break the silence with an excellent illustration of how they earned such a high place in English folk music.

Hands together please

Picture: Brian_Miller

Show of Hands Roots: The Best of Show of Hands (Hands On Records)

If a fair measure of the worth of an artist is whether his, her or their work leaves people feeling happier, then Show of Hands are pretty much a class apart.

Seated at the Albert Hall, standing in an Oxfordshire field or (perhaps more rarely these days) jostling for space in a crowded pub, the listener invariably finds a great deal of happiness. And with each of these experiences, I am lucky to count myself familiar.

Who is Roots, a double CD trawl through a magnificent 15-year career, aimed at? Show of Hands fans are a loyal bunch. If they will fill a grand Kensington hall three times over, they are unlikely to find any song here that they do not already possess.

But they will still buy it in droves, partly because such followers have a weakness for completeness and partly because they will persuade themselves the new versions of We Alright?, Exile, Crow on the Cradle and Santiago make the purchase price worth paying in any case.