Salut! Live

Andrew Curry writes: it’s that time of the year when Best Of lists start to appear in the music press, and we noticed the Mojo list of best 10 folk albums squeezed into the margins of one of their pages looking back at 2024.

I’ve copied it in lower down, and I’d say there’s one or two obvious candidates missing from this list, although one of those, Richard Thompson’s Ship to Shore, is actually in their Top 75 Albums of the Year.

The list has been put together by Jim Wirth, whose profile of Anne Briggs we wrote about here earlier this ear. As you listen, it's clear that his tastes head towards the more traditional. So it feels more coherent than many year end lists. The ten records can be seen towards the end of the post.

We’ve covered some of these performers on the site—Martin Simpson, of course, is something of a Salut! Live favourite. But certainly not enough of them: Colin and I perhaps need to get down with the trad fans a bit more often.

(Astrid Williamson, photo courtesy of Astridwilliamson.com.)

I’m not going to talk about all of these albums here, although we’ve made a Salut! Live playlist with a couple of tracks from each for readers who want to dip in.

Top of the Mojo list is Shetland Suite, by the Scots singer and composer Astrid Williamson. She was new to me, although when I looked her up I discovered that she trained at Scotland’s Royal Conservatoire and has been performing and recording since the 1990s. (Her first record, Rooms, was produced by John Cale).

Williamson grew up on Shetland, and Shetland Suite is a fine collection of songs from the islands. The record is a tribute to her late mother, and she probably grew up listening to these songs, or singing them. These are subtle and evocative arrangements—you can hear her composer’s ear—and I’ll be looking out more of her music. She's touring next year.

There’s nothing subtle about Stick in the Wheel, and I don’t think there’s meant to be. The vocalist Nicola Kearey and producer and arranger Ian Carter are from East London, and they combine traditional and electronic instruments in some high energy versions of some traditional and some self-composed songs. On Bandcamp they describe the record as "a satirical celebration of mistakes." And a bit more:

A Chaunter’s delight. 14th Century recording demons collecting mistakes in a sack. Women mugging rich merchants. Nettles being pissed on. Shit food at Lent... A Nursery rhymes reimagined as death threats.

At the most trad end of the spectrum here, Macdara Yeates is an Irish singer of Irish traditional songs. His record is called Traditional Singing From Dublin(this even sounds like a throwback to the authenticity wars that plagued folk music in the 1950s and early 1960s.) And you get what’s on the tin: unaccompanied or lightly accompanied versions of Irish songs. Yeates has a good voice and these are well done.

Angelina Morrison has had a busy year, releasing a solo record, OPHELIA, and Grace will lead me home, a collaboration with Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne and Jon Bickley.

Grace marks the 250th anniversary of the song Amazing Grace, and--with only a little bit of a fudge--the 300th anniversary of its composer, John Newton.

The record emerged from a research project that was led by Jon Bickley, which included interviews "covering every aspect of Newton's life, the slave trade and the evolution of the beloved hymn". The interviewees included Judy Collins. When Angeline Morrison and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne joined the project they read the research and were invited to contribute new songs.

The magazine's Americana list, by the way, is topped by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. Welch is the queen of traditional Americana, and her 2001 record, Time (The Revelator), is one of the classics of the genre. She’s in the Mojo list for her 2024 record Woodland.

Our Spotify playlist has on it a couple of tracks from each of the folk top ten, topped off by two of the Gillian Welch songs.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ulh0ZkLnGI4TAtOw0JHRy?si=4kKjUAmGSdaV4MIzPQ9ozg