Referencing the Knoydart peninsula is a sure-fire way to grab this listeners attention, should any budding folkies need that to know, but it then takes a little more to hold it. Thankfully, Wood manages that too, with this uplifting release, that bobs and leaps between moods with an agility born of experience. A name that may be unfamiliar, Wood is the sort of troubadour guaranteed to catch your ear at the outer limits of festivals, away from the hurly burly and headliners. Think the wackier fields at Glastonbury or anywhere at Knockengorroch, a festival that prides itself on an under the radar diversity of delights you might otherwise not discover. His previous incarnation was with The Banana Sessions, self-described “weird band from Scotland”, that could feature anyone on the Scottish scene available that night, including, at various times, Ross Ainslie and members of Lau.
It is with ‘Proud Knoydart’ the album opens, a lonesome hillside strum, or, more likely, mountainside, strung between sea and loch. A distant memory of ‘You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away’ inhabits Wood’s light vocal, as he starts, but no more than to set atmosphere, swiftly becoming his own song, with no love for the barren geography hidden anywhere, it all out in the open. It is an engaging start, lifted by his Caledonian brogue. The title then leaps off in a bubble of bass and guitar, elements of Alan Hull in his delivery and not a little the content: “Lenin stands on your wall and Tom Waits on your floor”. Banjo flickers into the second stanza, giving a more rounded sense of being, drawing you in with its warmth. From the sense of invitation offered by the opening track, already you feel welcome. There’s a lot to be said around how a singer embraces a “wo-o-oh” holler, and he does it well.
‘Guiding Drum’ is a slower reflective piece, ahead sinking into a slow languorous folk blues, just voice and guitar. Around a campfire you would find yourself singing the “It’s Only Me” chorus, and you wouldn’t be the only one, however paradoxical that may sound. There is almost then a segue into “4,000 Holes in Blackburn Lancashire”, a lifted line not without some irony. It relates to Wood’s uncle, mown down by a drugged driver in that town. A fingerpicked broadsheet style song, it is moving enough to appreciate even the pursed lipped whistle that follows each chorus. The lyric carries a hint of Oysterband’s ‘When I’m Up I Can’t Look Down’, with the bravado of that song stripped back to a bleak melancholic acceptance.
Album highlight, ‘The Square Of Fabric’ addresses the material, placed on the chest of a deserter, ahead the firing squad’s aim. A dauntingly bleak tale, it nonetheless manages to wreak some upbeat jaunty pride into the mouth of the 17 year old, about to die, some dignity where there might seem little. If you don’t immediately want to rewind and repeat, I’d be surprised, so as to let all the horror seep in. “Please give me no shame to wear”. Gulp, add in the “bup-en-bum” bounciness, and it is maybe the best song yet to cover this well-travelled subject.
Without dropping any ounce of his stark observatory skills. ‘The Banjo Song’ is then the story of his great grandmother, and the family’s subsequent journey betwixt Belfast and Shetland, via London and Aberdeen, spliced by a spell in, yes, Blackburn. His grandmother, born in the London blitz, had evacuated the family to the Lancashire town. It is quite a tale, set to a lively 6 string banjo roll, underpinned by guitar and bass. ‘Shoulda Coulda Woulda’ changes tack for a burst of bluesy roustabout, if with the same instrumentation, those Alan Hull comparisons sweeping back in. You are getting the real feel of someone whose campfire session, after hours, would prove most convivial to an appreciative audience.
Closing track, ‘The River’ shows a further side, as yet undisplayed much here, if present on earlier releases. So, despite beginning with just guitar and voice, gradually a slow swell of electronica creeps in, first in the sonorous and echoed beats, then a foreboding background drone. Electric bass moves from mere metronome to a throbbing counterpoint, and it is all rather unexpected in this company, however much it features also his core strength as a guitar and banjo acoustic minstrel. Clever, that.
Wood suggests this album is “about the threads that connect us, through family, place or experience”. He hopes the songs are “relatable”, and give or take desertion, I think they are, the circumstances understandable and accepting. It is short, but well and fully formed.
Seuras Og
Artist’s website: www.calumwood.com
Nothing on video from the album yet so here’s a recent bit of banjo playing – ‘Whisky Before Breakfast’:
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