This review is written by Dai Woosnam, daigress@hotmail.com, 4/05
Now here is a duo with a keen eye for the resonant album title.
Last time out they hit the bull’s-eye with the wonderfully punning
“Sharp Practice”: surely they could not top that this time? And of
course, they couldn’t.
But with the decision to opt for the title “Floating Verses”, they made a decent fist of coming close.
“Floating” verses, is their way of saying RECYCLED verses: which in
turn is their reference to the way that certain songs can contain
verses from other songs. Verses that arrive seemingly
independently at the “new” song, and requiring only the most minimal
alteration to fit snugly into both the context and narrative voice of
the new vehicle. A coincidence? Or more than that?
In the quality liner notes (as usual for a WildGoose album, a cut above
the norm of the music industry) we see Mary say rather
tongue-in-cheek - “So in a fit of inspiration we have called the album
after this coincidence”.
Well, the first thing to say regarding that, is that to give an album a
title in a fit of INSPIRATION strikes me as an improvement on the usual
CD-title-choosing habit of plumbing the depths and grabbing the most
absurd phrase to hand, in a fit of DESPERATION.
So hats off to this duo for their title choice. But they should be
warned: in me they encounter someone with a bit of a prejudice against
the very concept of recycling. I recall once reading that for
every job you create in the world of recycling, you throw three people
out of work in the hard “real world of business” out
there.
And I don’t like adding to the unemployment figures.
But, that said, I have to tell you that this Reviewer was won over by
their bold foray into the world of recycling. Their penchant here for
selecting some rarely-performed variants of well-known traditional
songs, really pays dividends in providing a well-balanced album that
builds on the considerable appeal of “Sharp Practice”. True, there is
no astonishing revelation presented here as there was with their last
album and that exquisite song “When Fishes Fly”, but what-the-heck,
please do not read that as adverse criticism. Songs like that one come
around once-in-a-lifetime if an artiste is lucky (and even then it
helps if they live long enough to almost catch Methuselah up on the
rails!)
But from the sublimely jaunty “Green Grows The Laurel” (golly, it makes
you feel you are back in The Ship in Blaxhall, with the chairman
calling for “lovely order!”) all the way through to them signing off
with a Hampshire variant of “If I Was A Blackbird”, the duo do not put
a foot wrong. If the last album scored a 5.8 for both “artistic
impression” and “technical merit”, then this one too is there or
thereabouts.
Indeed, with one track, it succeeds in doing the impossible (with me at
least). I refer to track 6: “Maid Freed From The Gallows (Prickly Bush)
Child No 95”.
Now, this is a song I first encountered in the 1950s. It used to be
played almost as staple fare by Uncle Mac on BBC Radio’s
“Children’s Favourites”. It was a recording by the late and very great
Marjorie Westbury. (Now there was a woman! A major talent if ever there
was one. Best known as Paul Temple’s wife/sidekick in the drama series,
she was also a divine singer.) And yes, she had a trained voice, but
she did not make the usual mistake of other trained singers in deciding
to sing traditional English folk song like she had a feather stuck up
her fundament!
And that record would be played almost every Saturday. As I recall, it
featured a girls’ school choir from Bristol. And with that glorious
voice of Marjorie Westbury’s fronting their sound. It was the first
recording of an English traditional song that really grabbed me, and
made me fall in love with the Tradition.
But that has had mixed results. Whilst it invited me into a relatively
secret garden with a host of colourful flowers to be investigated and
enjoyed, it also meant that all other versions of that song were “found
wanting” when compared to that Westbury damascene experience.
However, the fact is that I listened to that so-nostalgic song here on
this album, and for the first time ever, I did not have an overpowering
craving for the Westbury “original”. And that is to the credit of this
duo: for the truth is that even acclaimed versions by The Watersons and
Nic Jones have still made me hanker for the sweet harmonies of those
Bristolian lasses.
I cannot end the review without a word on Anahata’s authoritative cello
playing. It lends real gravitas to the proceedings: and these
proceedings are given added chiaroscuro by the innate musicianship of
Dave and Gina Holland on fiddle, flute and recorder.
Although it is only a quarter way through the year as I write this (and
thus very early days), I will be surprised if at the end of the year,
this CD does not figure in the shortlist for my Top Five albums of the
year. If it doesn’t, then it surely will mean that it will have been a
sensationally good year.
Buy it in Europe from www.musikfolk.com or in North America from www.elderly.com and, for other points of the compass, get details from Doug Bailey at WildGoose (e-mail: doug.bailey@wildgoose.co.uk website: www.wildgoose.co.uk)
Dai Woosnam
Grimsby, England
daigress@hotmail.com
Track List:
• Green Grows The Laurel (3.16)
• Darling Boy (I wish I had never known) (4.16)
• Geld him, lasses, geld him/Hornpipe by Purcell (3.28)
• Cambridge May Song (2.27)
• The Turtle Dove (Roud No 422) (3.11)
• Maid Freed From The Gallows (Prickly Bush) (4.41)
• The Willow Tree (O take me to your arms love) (2.21)
• Sportsman’s Hornpipe/Radstock/Whitefriar’s Hornpipe (4.05)
• Searching for Lambs (2.50)
• Fair Margaret & Sweet William (5.21)
• Hares on the Mountains (3.25)
• Waly Waly (4.14)
• Blow the Candles Out (4.10)
• Harliquin Air and Tom Fowler’s Hornpipe (4.12)
• If I was a Blackbird (3.35)
Copyright © 1998-2008 Kevin & Maxine’s Celtic & Folk Music CD Reviews. All rights reserved.
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