Newborough Open Mic

Murray will be playing an early (7.00 to 9.00pm) set at the Rose in Burghley Street (what used to be The Glass Onion) on Thursday 3rd March, he’ll be playing with all his echo and loop boxes, ebow etc. Ten years after Kieran Hebden released “Pause”, folktronica comes to Peterborough. (This is NOT an open mic.)

The Waters Of Sweet Sorrow

If you’re a fan of pastoral English or psych folk this may have passed under your radar. LIke most of my favourite music it’s from 1973 but unlike most of my recommendations I don’t have a 38 year old copy on vinyl because it was never released at the time, the master tapes sitting in someone’s attic and not seeing the light of day until 1994 on compact gramophone disc.

Midwinter were a (mainly) acoustic trio who got together in December 1972 to play a Christmas party at Great Yarmouth Folk Club and stayed together for a couple of years, playing around Norfolk and Suffolk. Paul Corrick and Ken Saul sang and played the usual wide variety of fretted instruments while Jill Child sang and played recorder and autoharp, this album also includes guests Dick Cadbury (of Decameron) on electric bass and Mick Burroughes playing occasional percussion and… jew’s harp!

“The Waters Of Sweet Sorrow” was recorded as a demo live-in-the-studio at Great Yarmouth Sound, eight of the eleven tracks are originals with lyrics based loosely on Norfolk myths and folklore (except one instrumental) and the other three are Trad. Arr. (the funereal Young Traditionish acapella “Scarborough Fair”, “Maids And Gentlemen” with a mellow fuzz guitar solo and the banjo and mandolin fuelled “All Things Are Quite Silent”). The playing, arrangements and vocal harmonies are superb throughout but the real star is Jill Child’s voice, unfortunately she left in ‘74 to go to college and, as far as I know, never sang professionally. The rest of the band morphed into Stone Angel – a whole other story – and are still around today, still making albums and still playing locally, see http://www.stone-angel.co.uk/.

When the record label Kissing Spell re-released the first two Stone Angel albums in 1994, Ken Saul also offered them these master tapes, that’s how “The Waters Of Sweet Sorrow” got to be released twenty one years after it was recorded. I don’t know who decided what to put on the cover but it’s perfect – the Arthurian “Lady Of Shalott (On Boat)” by late pre-Raphaelite artist John Waterhouse – Midwinter sound pre-Raphaelite and their music is full of myths and magic and the atmosphere of (Norfolk) waterways.

Not available on iTunes or Spotify, occasionally available on Amazon, Ebay etc, probably a cover-as-video on YouTube or you could just ask to listen to my iPod next time you see me out. (Be careful of dodgy metal bands with the same name!)

There will be a new open mic at Quinns Club on Market Street, Whittlesey on the last Friday of every month.

Vashti Bunyan

I think I may have over enthused about “These New Puritans” in an earlier post. With hindsight, I haven’t even downloaded the whole album, which speaks volumes, so I thought I’d better recommend something tried, tested and deeply loved since I was a very small puppy – (most of) the collected works of the wonderful Vashti Bunyan.

For those who don’t know the story, here’s a potted version: Vashti was ‘discovered’ by Andrew Loog Oldham in the mid-sixties and got her to record a Jagger/Richards song (which, frankly, didn’t suit her delicately beautiful voice) with his orchestra doing the music (which, to be honest, didn’t really suit her beautifully delicate voice) and she failed to be the new Marianne Faithful. Help came in the form of Donovan who bought her a horse and horse drawn caravan so she could travel up to his new commune thing on the Hebridean island of Clett but by the time she got there everyone else had abondoned the idea and left. She slowly made her way back to London with a handful of songs she’d written while travelling and recorded the “Just Another Diamond Day” album for Joe Boyd before going back to Scotland to stay with The Incredible String Band for a while, then to Ireland and just carried on, bringing up children and playing with dogs, picking flowers and being lovely, that sort of thing, and more or less disappeared.

Just Another Diamond Day

You’ve probably heard the title track of “Just Another Diamond Day” on a recent TV advert for portable telephones, most of the rest of the album is in a similar style: Childlike, almost nursery rhyme, words sung over gently picked acoustic guitar with other instruments played by various Joe Boyd alumni (Simon Nicol and Dave Swarbrick from Fairport Convention, Robin Williamson from The Incredible String Band and string arrangements by Nick Drake’s friend Robert Kirby) that seem a lot more simple than they actually are when you try to work them out, but what makes this album so extraordinary is the bewitching sheer beauty of Vashti’s voice. Perfect music to play on a picnic with your loved ones, especially if they like horses, boats and anything to do with the countryside, and perfect to listen to on your own when you’re feeling disenchanted with the world.

So Vashti went off to live her life but the world never forgot about her. When Devendra Banhart tracked her down and wrote her a letter a few years ago, one of her children showed her how to google herself on this new-fangled interweb thing she discovered copies of “Just Another Diamond Day” changing hands for thousands of pounds on Ebay (not my copy though – it’s worth much more than that to me!) and loads of of young singers and musicians saying she was a big influence. So she made friends with them and started hanging out with Devendra, Adem, Joanne Newsom, Espers, Vetiver etc, etc and started singing again and making guest appearances on her friends recordings. Particularly worth checking out are “Prospect Hummer” by Animal Collective (a song about her cat) and “Bees Dream Of Flowers And Your Summer’s Meadow Breath” by Anthony Phillips from Jack. Then she made her second album in 35 years – “Lookaftering”.

Lookaftering

“Lookaftering” is musically much more similar to “Just Another Diamond Day” than her recent collaborations but lyrically it is very grown up, as you would expect from a more mature songwriter, though the essential soul remains intact, there is no cynicism or bitterness here.  There are songs about children growing up, chances both missed and taken and unsentimental nostalgia, with a little bit of help from “Nu-Folk” superstar veterans and German composer Max Richter. Perfect music to listen to on a picnic when your loved ones are getting a bit fed up with “Just Another Diamond Day”.

It may be worth pointing out that her recent compilation of early singles and demos “Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind”  is probably not the best introduction to her work. While it is still very good, it is Vashti’s voice which is the best thing about it and it is easily only her third best album. Pretty much everything she has ever done is available on your preferred free music streaming service so check her out and tell me she’s not the musical equivalent of falling in love for the first time.