It’s the middle of the year, as I write, it’s the weekend of the solstice. A great time for a theme of Summerland and Wicker Man-inspired songs. Would we take a Blood On Satan’s Claw tribute? Ooo… maybe it’s a troublesome film, though, isn’t it? The proposed alternate ending might have been even better, where, just to be on the safe side and ensure Satan is properly put down, The Judge just has everyone in the village killed. And yet, there is a complete dearth of psych-folk, weird-folk, gothic-folk, folk-horror-folk or any of the close kindred of endlessly pared sub-genres. And so we’ll do different, but noting at the same time that Beltane isn’t so far away in a writing, recording, mixing, sending to Americana UK kind of way.
Setting off with Maisy Owen, and her new song My Youth Is All For You, which has the feel of an ancient ballad drawn through an Appalachian prism to make something new, delicately finger-picked and of now but with all the weight of then as well. It’s taken from the album Dark on a Sunny Day, which is out on Tompkins Square.
Switching to something with more modern roots, although there’s always something older lurking underneath, isn’t there?, we find Bristol’s Myer U Clark taking a hint from the likes of Aztec Camera, but linking that with English folk and maybe a little Mississippi blues – he calls it ‘musical jank’, and that is his prerogative. He says of Healers that it “is a love song describing a back and forth that isn’t going anywhere, but both people suspect they could be right on the edge of something special. There’s a thread throughout that the two act as a kind of medicine for one another.”
We carry on with this apparent theme of old/new mash-ups and musical collisions for Rattling Ark‘s Coleraine Jig, where traditional forms find a new direction with the adding of disconcerting drones and percussion that feel … sinister. This is a jig taken at a creeping pace, adding to a general feeling of unease. Irish band Rattling Ark are cellist and composer Kevin Murphy, alongside Thomas Haugh, and Lizzi Murtough. Their debut album, Top of a Mountain, was released on Jun 19th. It’s not all instrumentals, as Kevin and Lizzi also contribute vocals.
We stay in Ireland, and strongly in that traditional-meets-modern Venn diagram intersection for Ní Liom Dom by Rónán Ó Snodaigh & Myles O’Reilly. It’s taken from the album Mise Tusa, which was released on Claddagh Records and is the third by the duo. Composer Myles O’Reilly says of the song, “In our first recording session for Mise Tusa, we laid down six tracks, with Ní Liom Dom coming last. Unusually, it grew entirely out of the atmosphere we’d built in the room. Rónán didn’t arrive with lyrics as he normally would, just a single phrase. From that, he ad-libbed the melody and words, while I found the musical refrain alongside him. It all happened very quickly. Only afterwards did we realise: this was the first time we’d truly written a song together from scratch. Usually, Rónán brings something formed, a lyric, a melody… and I respond to it, shape it, build around it. But this time, we began at the same point, at the same moment. It feels like the perfect song to represent where we’ve arrived on this third album. It even tips into something a little ravy at the end, the pulse lifts, the heartbeat rises more than in any of our other work. There’s something expansive in it. Almost epic.”
And after all that experimentation, let’s close the new tracks section of the folk roundup with a release from MAAR, who are a trio that is two-thirds Icelandic and one-third Italian: Ösp Eldjárn, Helga Ragnars, and Valeria Pozzo. They first crossed paths in London in 2011, and after years of collaborating across each other’s solo projects, they finally joined forces and did the very americana thing of retreating to a cabin, only this time one in rural Iceland, to write their first songs together. The first release from these sessions is A Life Is a Life, which blends together acoustic instruments with harmony singing. MAAR is touring Iceland in July and the UK in October with a London debut show at Cecil Sharp House on Oct 7th.
And so we come to the classic folk track, which has been supposed to be a fop to any whose sensibilities have been affected by too large a dose of experimentation. Supposed, but we find this time is Blowzabella, a band with nearly fifty years of history now, but who hit the folk world with a revolutionary drone sound from the hurdy-gurdy, linked with a strong bass and a brass section which veered into the quite jazzy. Adam Was a Poacher came from the album Two Score, and shows the band still being quite eclectic even forty years into their musical journey. But that’s folk for you, always forging a path into the future.
