Short lines - a journey with UK folk and Americana

It is fairly easy to follow the big picture but even easier to fail to recognise, let alone even hear or see live, quite what is happening at home. This is a journey through some of that territory because the UK is taking it aboard with relish, sometimes abandon.
This first is the oldest of the three releases that I am planning to mention here. It was released last year.

Angelina - Vagabond Saint (Wonderful Sound, 2 December 2016).

Angelina the artist is named for a Dylan song and this is an album of dust-bowl country blues with a voice to match.  There are tales of high plains and endless trains...  that is all the more remarkable for the fact that she has lived her life and the album was recorded on The Isle Of Wight. It is yet another astonishing omission from my list of 'albums of 2016'. It's tough but this might just be one of my favourite songs, at least today.

Jump forward to 2017 and here are two other acts that have come to my attention. In both cases they take a distinct tack through what should really be regarded as well-charted waters.
This duo had been plying their own solo careers around the smaller live stages in London until their paths crossed and they decided to become writing, recording and performing entity Ferris & Sylvester, comprising Issy Ferris and Archie Sylvester. There is a lot of 60s and 70s influence on show here but never to the point of pastiche; they claim that songwriting must be truthful and honest, even if that is hard to do. It's quite possible to believe that they really mean what they say.

Ferris and Sylvester - The Yellow Line (self-released, 22 June 2017).

I shall end this short tour with another EP, this one from London artist Jade Bird. She does nothing whatsoever to hide her love for Americana folk. The five tracks here run to only just fifteen minutes but it's a determined pitch.

Jade Bird - Something American (Glassnote, 6 July 2017).

Listen, seek, read and wait - in no particular order

This is something that could never have been planned. Last Thursday it was my birthday and I didn't have much idea of a present that I might buy for myself.  Yesterday, as I was taking a day off work, I walked into town in the summer sunshine with the main reason that I wanted to purchase tickets for King King live in November.
I was in no particular hurry to get home and decided to poke about in the various charity shops on my way back. Just sometimes interesting railway books are to be found languishing on the shelves, but not on this occasion.
It turned out however to be a decision that gave me a birthday present to myself for next to nothing. I have been collecting such things for a while. I remember being introduced to the music of Bob Dylan by Radio Caroline in the early 1980s when I was a student at UKC. It may have taken me the better part of thirty years to catch up with this release, the much reviled electric-one, but better late than never.
Then there was a problem - how much would it cost. I didn't want to look too excited or draw attention to the particular one that I had found in a newly-arrived box of fifteen vinyl records.
I enquired and some vacillation followed. In the end I offered £20 for the lot as an opening gambit. It was accepted immediately and I headed home with a box that was heavy to carry even with handles made of parcel tape by the staff in the shop.

It is Columbia CS 9189 - the original US release from August 1965. There have been many other releases of it subsequently, even on vinyl. The first song on it is 'Like A Rolling Stone' and it was recorded for the album on 15 June 1965 (so fifty years to the day). Columbia doubted its viability as a single as it is over six minutes long; it remains Dylan's best selling single.

At the other end of the time scale is this: Flo Morrissey is an artist who, at just twenty, seems to have wandered out of Laurel Canyon without ageing in the intervening decades to release her début album Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful on Glassnote.

Tomorrow Will Be Beautiful is not the perfect album but in a way it would be worrisome if it were. It's title might indeed allude to that. There is far too much pressure on new artists now.
This is 'Sleeplessly Dreaming', live.


It is however a thing of rare vision. Few realised the importance of Bob Dylan or Joni Mitchell at first. Flo Morrissey played Green Man Festival last year but I didn't see her play. This was a big mistake but then again I can't be in more than one place at a time. She plays End of The Road 2015 and I shall be there watching and listening.