New Music 2018 - Part 23 - Kitty Macfarlane - Namer Of Clouds

This is an album that, having seen the artist behind it live several times, I have been waiting upon for some time. It is her first full length and it follows on from the 2016 Tide and Time EP that I mentioned here. 

Kitty Macfarlane - Namer Of Clouds (Navigator Records, 21 September 2018).

This LP and the aforementioned EP share only one track and that is the EP's opener 'Wrecking Days'. This is the track list for the LP.

Kitty Macfarlane - Namer Of Clouds

• Starling Song
• Namer Of Clouds
• Seventeen
• Sea Silk
• Morgan's Pantry
• Glass Eel
• Wrecking Days
• Dawn & Dark
• Frozen Charlotte
• Man, Friendship
• Inversnaid

One track that particularly caught my attention when first I heard it live at North Dorset Folk Festival last autumn is Glass Eel. That particular festival is sadly no more but here she is playing it at a brand new festival that I had the pleasure of attending just two months ago.

Kitty Macfarlane,  Main stage, Beardy Folk Festival, 24 June 2018.

This is acoustic folk but with a contemporary and often environmentally aware twist but it isn't overtly political. It doesn't have to be; it is too well crafted to need that crutch upon which to stand.

Moulettes - Marnhull Acoustic Sessions - 9 November 2014.

This is your final warning.
You will most probably never be able to see this again. One of the UK's finest bands, The Moulettes - a six-piece usually, live in a 90-seat venue.
Sunday 9 November from 7pm, Marnhull Acoustic Sessions for tickets.  If you miss this then you will be asking yourself why before very long.

It is not folk music like you ever knew it. Moulettes is supporting Bellowhead for many dates on the the latter's UK autumn tour and taking a day off to visit Marnhull. Bellowhead is playing Birmingham Symphony Hall that same evening and you can't now sneak off to that instead as it is sold out!

New Music - Part 21 - Up-coming UK folk

To be quite honest my in-box is overflowing with new things that I want to mention, hence two posts in successive days and the likelihood of several more to come before the end of this coming weekend. In contrast to yesterday's post these are all forthcoming albums and are not the début ones from the artists concerned.

This first, Over the Edge - The Carrivick Sisters, is not actually released until October 4, 2013 (physically on CD as a six-panel cardboard digi-file with lyric booklet).

If you can't wait until the release date then I suggest you check out its predecessor, From the Fields (2011), which I mentioned specifically for the song 'Charlotte Dymond'. While that one is essentially in the UK folk tradition much of this album, and I strongly suspect the new one too, happily borrows from other roots music in particular that of Appalachian and bluegrass.
Over the Edge consists of nine original songs, two original instrumentals and one traditional song. The track listing is below:

• Over the Edge
• If You Asked Me
• The Moon
• I Know You
• Making Horses
• Outside Time
• Lady Howard
• Pretty Fair Damsel
• Man in the Corner
• Old Friend
• Slap on Eleven
• Bird

If you sign up to their e-newsletter here then you can grab yourself a very good deal pre-ordering the album on CD [4 July - this offer has now ended]. Recording and releasing an album doesn't come cheap and many of the costs come up front.

The next two releases come courtesy of Navigator Records; the first is the second LP by Derbyshire singer-songwriter Lucy Ward. Her first LP, Adelphi Has To Fly, was released by Navigator Records on June 13, 2011. The next, Single Flame, is released on August 19, 2013.

Once again it combines the new and traditional, but...

If there is one single thing that makes me regret the cancellation of Frome Folk Festival 2013 it is that she was one of the confirmed artists for it. No artist wants seemingly confirmed bookings cancelled, for that matter, and I hope Frome can make it up to her in due course.

This next is from Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker; new to the Navigator Records fold with their album Fire & Fortune that is scheduled for release on July 22, 2013.

That said, if you haven't experienced the delights of their previous releases such as the Homemade Heartache EP (2012) or the albums, The Seas Are Deep and One Light Is Gone, then you already have a whole new world to discover.

Lyrics again - Wine and Roses

It is ages since I have done any lyrics, which once was a regular event. Thank-you to whoever has just asked me for those for 'Wine and Roses', a song from Heidi Talbot's latest album 'Angels Without Wings' (2013), released by Navigator Records. They will be posted here tomorrow, once I have checked them against the aforementioned original recording.
Indeed this is likely to become a post featuring at least one other artist to release on this label in 2013.

Wine and Roses

I see the young ones slowly strolling
On the Friday Promenade.
The sun is low, their faces glowing
Hopeful hearts out on display.

In their dreams are wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park.
Holding hands and rubbing noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

I was much the same in my day
All impatient and unsure.
But alone I soon surrendered
Pledged my soul, so young and pure.

For he gave me wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park.
Held my hand and we rubbed noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

I see the young ones slowly strolling
On the Friday Promenade.
The sun is low, their faces glowing
Hopeful hearts out on display.

I'd never trade our life together
Though we had our rocky times.
My heart it rose and fell so often
Like the constant shifting tides.

It wasn't all just wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park.
Holding hands and rubbing noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

I am old and all alone now
My children gone and far away.
They used to ask what lovers are
I never knew just how to say.

But love is more than wine and roses
Quiet picnics in the park
Holding hands and rubbing noses
Softly kissing in the dark.

If you have never seen Heidi Talbot live then really you owe it to yourself to do so. I had the wonderful fortune, at Truck Festival 2011, to do exactly that. It was a tiny stage and she was part of a trio with John McCusker and Kris Drever. To be quite honest, in the UK folk world at least, things don't come much better than that.  This fuzzy photograph is the best that I could muster in the circumstances...

Even a folk trio should not have four members! Roddy Woomble was a surprise guest here.

New Music 2011 - A mixed case of folk - Part 1

A few of the LPs (I still like to call them that, whatever their format) that I am to mention here might have appeared in these pages before, if only in passing.  Many of the artists most certainly have been mentioned and, for those that only recall the 1960s/1970s blossoming of folk and new folk, there are some returnees too.

I shall start with the latest LP, 'Saturnine' by Jackie Oates. It is her fourth solo recording unless I am mistaken. It immediately caught my attention because I am listening to her previous one 'Hyperboreans' (2009) so frequently at the moment. It will be released by ECC Records on September 12, 2011.

  
Whilst it has a great deal of influence from the south west of England, where she is now based, I can't imagine that the final song 'Fortune Turns The Wheel' is anything other than a version of that traditional song from the north east of England.

I have definitely mentioned this next LP in passing. It is already released.

'Adelphi Has To Fly' - Lucy Ward (Navigator Records, 2011)

  

This is her début album, at least commercially, and is a mixture of new songs and brave interpretations of older ones and its creator comes from the vicinity of Derby.  The fact that it is released by Navigator Records says quite a lot about it in my opinion.

To be continued, probably in several parts --- but with it comes a thought on continuity:

Back in the days of the aforementioned first folk revival there was a label that was a huge part of it. It is still going strong three decades down the line; it is Topic Records.