Following on from the ‘Lord Of Chaos’ single featuring Kathy Pilkinton on vocals and Graham Coe on cello with its theme of shedding your burdens and from whence the EP title comes, CHRIS CLEVERLEY now releases Gods Of All Things (Opiate Records), the full five track follow up to last year’s seasonal-themed In The Shadow Of John The Divine. Again putting a different spin on the usual seasonal, there’s two further originals and three traditional numbers given the Cleverley treatment. The latter opens the collection with a suitably wintery instrumental arrangement of ‘The Holly & The Ivy’, the second being the more obscure ‘The Falcon or Corpus Christi Carol’, voices held in the distance with a liturgical arrangement taking its cue from Jeff Buckley’s and the third closing up with his and Kim Lowings’s haunting medieval-shaded arrangement of ‘Coventry Carol’, a staple at All Saints Church in his hometown of Kings Heath, Birmingham, and one’s rooted in his childhood memories. The other original, a co-write and duet with Molly Rymer ‘Frost Giant’ which, invoking the imagery of the Jötunn, the ancient Norwegian embodiments of the primal forces of nature and chaos and an analogy for the frozen disconnect in contemporary connections with each other and the world in which we live as they sing “shards of frozen/Haemoglobin/A frozen ocean/It’s you I’m hoping for”. Quite magical.
www.chriscleverley.com
Before we dive headlong into the Christmas singles here’s a record that might suit a Hogmanay ceilidh. HILDALAND are fiddler Louise Bichan, who hails from Orkney, and mandolin player Ethan Setiawan from Indiana. The title of their second EP, Fiddle Tunes is self-explanatory: just two instruments working together in stripped back, elegant simplicity.
The first track, ‘The Watchman’s Polka’, is a jolly tune with Louise’s fiddle skipping around over the mandolin. A noticeable feature of this and, indeed, the whole set is the clear stereo separation – something that you don’t hear so much these days. ‘C Tunes’ is rather more serious but there comes another change with ‘The Brushy Fork Of John’s Creek’. This is clearly of American origin featuring Ethan up front with Louise trying to muscle in on the act and finally succeeding. The last track, ‘Sandy’s Waltz’ is rather more delicate and shares out the lead role rather more equably.
https://www.hildaland.com/
Available on Bandcamp or as a limited edition handmade CD, STYLUSBOY releases The Coleshill Tapes (Home Session) an EP of four songs inspired by the residents of Coleshill who shared their memories from World War II. Opening with the upbeat strummed reverie of ‘Pockets Full Of Life And Freedom’ with its talk of waltzing the dark away at Saturday dances and battles paused for a football match between foes, it moves on to the plucked notes of the wistful poignancy of the slow, softly crooned winter-set ‘The Journey That Never Came Back’. ‘A Better Tomorrow’ is as musically upbeat and ultimately optimistic as the title suggests with the lyrics recounting taking shelter from bombing raids and the community spirit of the residents. It ends with ‘Raise A Glass’, a thank you toast to those who’ve gone before, the granddads, the fathers and brothers “who fought for me and you”, the mothers and daughters and sisters “who held life together like glue” and “those who sailed that day’…and those who brought them back home again”.
www.stylusboy.bandcamp.com/
With proceeds going to help fund the Alzheimer’s Society, AMY GODDARD digitally releases ‘Sing With Me’, a poignant strummed song that speaks to how, for those afflicted (“I can’t remember you/Could you be my long lost lover/Or maybe you’re my child or brother/Are you even really here at all?”) music can spark memories and bring comfort (“But then I hear a melody/It sparks a hidden light in me/And fleeting flickering pictures fill my view/Just for now I can simply be/When you sing with me”).
www.amygoddard.bandcamp.com/track/sing-with-me
The celebrated trio that is MICHELL, PFEIFFER & KULESH have a digital Christmas single, ‘Carol Of The Bells’. They sing in Ukrainian, English and German, a song espousing peace and goodwill. Originally called ‘Shchedryk’ in its native language, Daria Kulesh takes the lead line in Ukrainian, the English lyrics translated by Peter J. Wilhousky presumably sung by Odette Michell with Karen Pfeiffer singing the anonymous German translation. It’s a complex musical arrangement by Jason Emberton and the bells you hear at the beginning were recorded in Kyiv on the day the war began.
https://michellpfeifferkulesh.bandcamp.com/album/carol-of-the-bells-single
The first of songs that will form the follow up top When Adam Was A Boy, Clydesider JOE McMAHON delivers a powerful protest about the vitriolic rhetoric directed at migrants with the simply titled fingerpicked ‘If’ as he sings how the world would be a better place “If the frightened huddled migrant who wash up on our shores/fleeing persecution because we made them fight our wars were shown a little kindness instead of what it store”, summing up the sentiments in the final lines “your enemy’s not on a dingy, he’s on that private jet”.
www.joemcmahon1.bandcamp.com/track/if
Approached by Ruth Radley at Mary Stevens Hospice in Stourbridge to organise a performance of some songs over the Christmas period for patients and their families, in collaboration with Pete Harvey on cello, SUSY WALL has gone one step further and on Dec 1 is releasing piano ballad ‘One Day In December’, with all Bandcamp sales going to the hospice. The song addresses the difficulties and emotional burdens that are heightened by the season (“there’ll be time for healing/But it might not be today/Seeing the smiles and the joy and the bright lights/Won’t make it okay/You might put on a brave face/Do the things you always do/But somehow it’s hard just to know/There’s another long day to get through”) and seeks to spotlight the support and encouragement such hospices can bring (“So they’ll ring out the bells/And they’ll sing silent night/They’ll be picking out trees/And dreaming of everything covered in white…One day in December/When you’ll be alright”).
www.susywallmusic.com
‘Wishing For Snow’ is a seasonal song (OK, it mentions Christmas) by TOM HOUSTON. The music imitates bells, at least in part, and is the responsibility of Neill MacColl who produces some atmospheric sounds behind Tom’s voice and guitar with possibly some tape reversal for extra mystery. Guest vocals are by Icelandic singer Hafdis Huld.
https://www.tomhouston.org/
This is an interesting one, written and produced by ROBERT OLIVER, ‘Fallen By The Tide’ is a haunting, slow building maritime power ballad voiced through the words of Alonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, the reluctant commander of the 1588 Spanish Armada, who summoned by a king he could not refuse, led a fleet destined for defeat – and for infamy. The song gives him voice as a man torn between obedience and conscience. With swelling cinematic orchestration, it’s a compelling listen, the twist being that the music and vocals are all AI-generated by Songer to whom the track’s credited. Scary and thrilling at the same time.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfqjGL66U-A&list=OLAK5uy_nE2SfCrlk06svHMXLFpZ_gF-SixHwHVuo
‘Waiting For Christmas To Come’ is the seasonal single by THE TWANGTOWN PARAMOURS, a delightful, melodic song that’s all trees and snow … except that it takes in wars in unspecified foreign lands (we can guess) and resolves a personal problem. It packs a lot into three minutes.
https://www.twangtownparamours.com/
Inspired, if that’s the right word, by the death of her husband, Hampshire’s LUCY KITCHEN releases a full band version of ‘The Boatman’ (Bohemia Rose Records) which, drawing on the Greek myth of Charon, the ferryman to the Underworld, is her meditation on grief, letting go and holding on as she sings “I’m gonna bury my grief/Beneath the brown and rotting leaves/Of this stormy winter/I’m gonna take that love/And all that was lost/And let it go/For my true love’s gone now/And I am left here alone”, the despair offset by the thought of being reunited, even with all that entails (“I pray that death will take me/And I’ll see my love again…I will see you on the other side…I would feel the sun upon my face”) as, driven by organ, the track builds in power before the birdsong coda.
www.lucykitchen.bandcamp.com/track/the-boatman-2
I don’t really think that she has anything to worry about yet but AMY HOPWOOD‘s new single is ‘I’d Rather Be Older (Than Dead)’. Recorded live with an audience singing along on the chorus (borrowed from ‘Poverty Knock’ tunewise), it’s a humorous reflection on the aging process. Amy – try being 74!
https://amyhopwood.co.uk/
Sharing verses with Rachel Cole and co-writer Billy Hartman, on Dec 12 DUSTIN BROWN digitally releases ‘Ballerina’, which, haunted by the ghosts of John Prine and Guy Clarke’, is a world-weary song about regrets and looking for connections (“Do you like Selma or Stillwater, I don’t mind hanging around… if you’re already going down, I’ll be awaiting on the shoulder/For you and spring to come around….Made a promise then I broke it/Now all I need is a little luck”).
www.dustinbrownsongs.com
Co-written with Boo Hewerdine and accompanied by Anna Massie, Innes White and Charlie Stewart, HANNAH RARITY releases ‘Christmas Came Early This Year’, a single raising money for the Highland Hospice. It’s a song written to bring comfort to those who may not have any other support on the 25th.
https://www.hannahrarity.com/
Comprising Isle of Lewis instrumentalist Martin Adil-Smith and Inverness singer Jo-Jo Azare, dark folk experimentalists, SKORUM see the year out with ‘Polaris’ which, inspired by the stories of HP Lovecraft is about the realms of Sleep and Desire are the secret place where we escape from the real world, the five-minute track riding a steady drum beat rhythm over which Azare intones in almost chant like mode. By total contrasts, it comes with two totally mainstream covers of ‘Tom Dooley’ that lopes along with plucked banjo and a scurryingly fingerpicked, percussion clanking ‘Shady Grove’. www.skorummusic.wordpress.com
SIMON THOUMIRE releases a gentle Christmas single in the shape of ‘Shandy And Mousetta’s Waltz’ accompanied by Rory Matheson’s piano which, in fact, introduces the track. The cover features the titular teddy bears which belong to a friend’s daughter. It’s a lovely simple composition with just a hint of one of Eric Bogle’s tunes.
www.simonthoumire.com
The second taster for KATHERINE PRIDDY’s third album, Frightening Machines, is the title track, a dreamy, slow walking, keyboards-stroked number that, the title referring to our complex but fragile bodies, comes from personal experience of when hers stopped functioning as it should (“Seems things have taken a turn/All these levers and systems won’t do as they’re told anymore/I’m having to learn/That these frightening machines aren’t as tough as they seem…now I’m calling/Out for a sign that this body’s still mine after all”). Feeling “a passenger at my own wheel”, it ends with recovery as she sings “I just needed to take time to heal”. A fine body of work indeed.
www.katherinepriddy.co.uk
A song of nostalgia and broken dreams is the new single by EUGENE McGUINNESS. The twist is that ‘London’ is about a city not a person; a city that Eugene is falling in and out of love with. It’s a remarkably affecting song and it conjures up all sorts of images – if you’ve lived in one place for any length of time you’ll understand what he’s saying.
https://eugenemcguinnessmusic.bandcamp.com/
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