Eliza Carthy / Waterson Carthy cdRoots Home Page

Search for music Need Help?

ELIZA CARTHY
Anglicana Topic TSCD539

WATERSON CARTHY
Dark Light Topic TSCD536

They don't sit around doing now't for long, do they? No sooner had we drawn breath from the excellent Blue Murder album with its vocal assault on our senses over the summer, than Martin, Norma, Eliza and Tim Van Eyken are back in more familiar guise with a wholly different and more varied, but no less engaging demonstration of the English folk experience. And the poor old dansette is still creaking from that when here comes Eliza, back from her adventures in the corporate pop world, to re-state her individual crusade for English traditional music with the bullishly titled Anglicana.

In truth this is the more exciting of the two. Eliza has invested so much energy and imagination into finding different ways of presenting the tradition to a new generation, her role as a champion of English song has often overshadowed her credentials as a performer of it. Let there be no doubt this is her most majestic and mature solo album yet, as she gets to the heart of a succession of big ballads, in a heartfelt manner that has direct lineage to those great old singers featured on The Voice Of The People, yet still reflects the freshness of youth with subtle, original and sensitive arrangements. The snail-paced treatment of Just As The Tide Was Flowing is an exceptional heartbreaker and Little Gypsy Girl has some delicious harmonies from mum Norma and cousin Maria and an irresistible raggedy spirit. An odd, industrial percusssion rhythm lifts Pretty Ploughboy with its haunting chorus, recently used so effectively by Chumbawamba. Eliza gives a bravura vocal performance on Bold Privateer over a brilliant Tim Van Eyken guitar arrangement, and there's a beautiful fiddle/ guitar duet with her old man on Dr Mcmbe (think about it), written in honour of his 60th birthday. Yet perhaps the most compelling of all is Worcester City, featuring John Spiers & Jon Boden as on several other tracks, with a driving drumbeat and fiddle line of such intensity it recalls the spirit of vintage Fairport, Sandy Denny and all.

Invidious to compare but difficult to avoid, given the crossover of personnel on the two albums, and against this Dark Light seems relatively routine. Not that the array of instruments and voices at their disposal could ever amount to anything run-of-the-mill, but the nature of persistent excellence is that you tend to take it for granted and the album may be a little downbeat for its own good. It's a serious collection alright, full of big, big songs like Death & The Lady, The Outlandish Knight, The Holland Handkerchief (both magically sung by Norma) and Lofty Tall Ship, the Sam Larner song which Martin credits with hooking him on traditional song in the first place. There's also a remarkable song, Diego's Bold Shore, discovered by Vic Gammon and sung to perfection by Eliza, a jaunty The Devil & The Farmer for openers, an invigorating Copper Family tribute Shepherds Arise to end, and some irresistible melodeon (and one stirring vocal) from Tim Van Eyken in-between times. So, a fine if dark album of delicate subtleties and brooding depthŠ but certainly not one to make your heart sing. It may be destined to hover in the shadows of the immense vocal barrage of that glorious recent family outing with Blue Murder. Colin Irwin

Anglicana

Dark Light

Article is copright 2002 Southern Rag/fROOTS, and is used by permission
No reproduction is allowed wiothout the specific permission of the publishers.

Read about more artists recommended by our friends at fROOTS magazine

Credit card orders are placed on a secure server.