Log #176 - Magpies Drinking Wine In Bombay

The Unthanks Mount The Air

Bombay Bicycle Club So Long, See You Tomorrow

Free The Free Story

Trees On The Shore (bonus disc)

Iron And Wine The Creek Drank the Cradle

Lal and Mike Waterson Bright Phoebus

Just the two new entries this week - both charity shop pick ups. 

Good value for my £ was Iron and Wine's debut album. It's fairly predictable solo acoustic strumming with whispered voice stuff from Sam Beam. This was what attracted fans to him in the first place, and some were disappointed when he went a bit more electric around the time of Kiss Each Other Clean in 2011 (which I loved), and then again when he went a bit more avant garde jazz (yes, really - I saw him at Black Deer Festival in 2018 and have no idea what he was playing).

As for the other new entry I wasted a £. Even the CD case is broken. I should have guessed. With a silly name like that, Bombay Bicycle Club were bound to be insipid middle of the road electro indie pop - file with Mercury Rev, Vampire Weekend, Arcade Fire and Florence and the Machine - in other words in the bin.

Thank goodness for the Unthanks. Lovely stuff. Their rendition of Magpie (as first heard on The Detectorists) is haunting although I was intrigued why it stopped at 7 when I think I saw 8 the other day. There are various versions of the rhyme, but it seems the most common in folklore is the 7 version:

One's for sorrow

Two's for joy

Three's for a girl and

Four's for a boy

Five's for silver

Six for gold

Seven's for a secret never told

Devil devil i defy thee

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Log #175 - Folk Old And New

The Unthanks Mount The Air
Felice Brothers Felice Brothers

Free The Free Story

Trees On The Shore (bonus disc)
Felice Brothers Undress

Lal and Mike Waterson Bright Phoebus

It's all about the folk this week with two significant new entries - one from modern day, one from days gone by. 

Firstly The Unthanks make a welcome return with their Mount The Air album which won BBC Folk Album Of The Year in 2016. 

I can barely get over how good this album is. It's beautiful chamber pieces are based around gentle piano supplemented by strings and horns. And then there are the sisters' voices too. Completely unique. Sounding both modern and ancient.

Bright Phoebus on the other hand sounds just ancient. It's a very unusual record which is much admired as an underground classic in folk (and wider rock and pop actually) circles. It is dark and haunting (save for a couple of more upbeat country rock numbers and the whimsical opening song Rubber Band). 

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Log #174 - Uncovering A Psych-Folk Classic

Johnny Flynn A Larum
Trees On The Shore

Harmonia Tracks And Traces

The Comet Is Coming Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery 
Nick Cave Skeleton Tree

Nick Cave Ghosteen

I've enjoyed all these albums this week. Johnny Flynn's debut A Larum is brilliant - great songs delivered with a great voice. What differentiates this from the middle of the road? - what's that band? - I can't even remember their name but you must know them - folk stomp stuff with waistcoats. Something brothers is it? I honestly can't remember their name but often think of them. Must have blanked it again. It will come to me. 

It's hard to put your finger on it (or in your ear) but I think it is simply the songs and the voice. Flynn sounds authentic - he has a great range with just the right amount of gravel. He reminds me of Dave Swarbrick. Most the songs are great folk but this one really stands out as a rock song:

Coming as an after the event collection of extras (with Brian Eno) the Harmonia Tracks And Traces album is generally overlooked in preference for their two mainstream albums Music Von and Deluxe. It is indeed quite different but in its own right a classic ambient collection which I expanded upon in my Log #154.

Good honking enjoyment to be had from modern electronic jazz trio The Comet Is Coming. It's relatively exciting as jazz goes, I guess. I'm a bit indifferent to it so far, as I was to the similar sounding (as far as I know) Kamasi Washington. There's a rap number with Kate Tempest (an artist, or genre to be honest, I've not got into yet).

More absorption of the two Nick Cave albums. Both growers. Still prefer the Skeleton Tree, marginally more accessible.

If you are about to listen to On The Shore for the first time, then you are to be envied. In an era of mass communication and commercial misappropriation, there are few genuinely lost treasures to be discovered.

I couldn't agree more and my highlight this week has undoubtedly been the brilliant Trees album. This has become a bit of an underground classic over the years. I first heard it a few years ago and unaccountably only just got round to purchasing a copy. This issue comes with a bonus disc of demos and alternative versions but to be honest that is superfluous to the original (the differences are even spelt out in the sleeve notes which may be a sign one might not notice otherwise).

On The Shore sits with Fairport Convention's best Sandy Denny fronted folk rock albums (Unhalfbricking and Liege and Lief). Half the tracks are traditional reinterpretations, half originals. All are delivered with the emphasis on rock with searing electric guitar and crystal clear high vocals from ex-opera singer Celia Humphris. Apart from the guitar-centric Richard Thompson influenced Fairport Convention the other band they remind me of actually is Free: there's a track The Streets Of Derry that extends into a guitar solo over rising bass which sounds just like Free's classic Mr. Big. Then the centrepiece of the album, the 10 minute Sally Free And Easy is a response to Fairport Convention's groundbreaking A Sailor's Life. But what the album is most remembered for, like the Fairport's Liege And Lief, are the brave reinterpretations of traditional folk songs in a rock format as with Geordie below:

The haunting cover which matches the psych-folk music within was shot in the grounds of Inverforth House in Hampstead. The young girl photographed on the front swinging a bottle of water (which I thought was a skipping rope before looking closely) was a musician friend's daughter.

Nothing else happened for Trees after their only two albums - this from 1971 and the debut, The Garden Of Jane Delaney (1970). The original members are still around I believe, which makes it odd they've never had a reunion - I'm sure a tour of On The Shore supplemented with the debut album and a few more covers and traditionals would be very popular but I guess they're all doing other things and perhaps don't want to spoil the mystery. Bizarrely Celia Humphris' voice can now be heard on the pre-recorded London Underground announcements.

Nice simple website here.

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Trees On The Shore - Definitely At The Rock End Of The Folkrock Spectrum

Trees released two records in 1970, The Garden Of Jane Delawney and On The Shore and that was about it for them. The effort and exuberance needed to record two LPs (neither bad) in the same year can be felt all through On The Shore: Their record company CBS applied pressure but not much money and so, due to lack of rehearsal and studio time, some of the musicianship suffers, and the original material is patchy. But the overall sound of this album is what is really impressive.

Cilia Humphris (now the voice of the Northern Line, fact fans) sings in an earthy and raw way sailing right down the middle of every note. On songs like Murdoch and Sally Free And Easy she sends a shiver up this reviewer’s withered spine. Murdoch also sports a rather natty ‘wall of sound’ ending which is aided on the remix by a wailing organ.

The musicians behind Humphris are where the real strength is. The twin guitars of Barry Clarke (lead) and David Costa (acoustic) are a muscular equal to the sometimes luminary bass of Bias Boshell and solid drums of Unwin Brown. The sound is bold and more psychedelic than Fairport and you feel a band who are really into their style if not their stride. This is what you might enjoy more about this recording than others of the genre: The energy of the performances. There is a Led Zep feel in there and I'm sure I spotted a future Iron Maiden riff somewhere. Notably there is a timid pedal guitar part on Geordie, another highlight, which was sampled for St. Elsewhere on the Gnarls Barkley album of the same name.

It leaves you feeling rather uplifted.

Cyril Tawney’s Sally Free And Easy pops up here and is one of the album's high points. A beautiful piano intro played by Boswell leads into low and sultry vocals from Humphris. Trees are oft-derided for their overlong arrangements and Sally... is no exception, except just when you are about to tire of this one Clarke embarks on a surprising guitar wig-out that crashes into another good ending. The whole thing is quite a hit and miss affair: Fool is fantastically irritating and While The Iron Is Hot lurches from harps and strings to prog-rock guitar and back. However taken as a whole it is enjoyable and it leaves you feeling rather uplifted.

The second disk contains remixes of some album tracks, nothing amazing here, just cymbals fiddled with and guitars jiggered. There is a BBC recording called Forest Fire which is pleasant enough, but the joys are contained in the original album, now restored to its full glory. Well worth discovering this summer....


Creatively and commonly shared from a BBC review by Greg McLaren 2007 (with numerical rating by E.B.)

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