A new a capella traditional folk trio comprising Seb Stone, Matt Quinn and Lizzy Hardingham, taking their name from the Sussex dialect for a pigeon and a field in Selmeston, Walden meaning pigeon oak, their debut album, Unto The Sky, consists of twelve traditional numbers both familiar and more obscure.
Two of the former open proceedings, first Quinn initially taking lead on ‘John Barleycorn’, the others joining on the refrain and the subsequent verses, and then Hardingham’s distinctive tones leading ‘Reedcutter’s Daughter’. It’s back to Quinn to step into the spotlight for the rollalong arrangement of the lesser known ‘Sweet Lisbweemore’, an Irish tale of a girl outwitting the “dirty scheming rogue” who offers to be her guide, adopting the device of the characters singing about the song’s author, who she fears will write something comprising about her, more familiar in novels than folk music, with the refrain mentioning turbary, the right to dig turf on common or private property.
Stone takes his first ringing lead vocal with ‘You Lads And Lasses’, a little known cautionary lost love lament variation on ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’ and ‘Garners Gay’ retaining the gardening imagery lines about the violet, the lily and the pink.
It’s back to Hardingham for a rousing take on ‘May Song’, a May sex-themed carpe diem carol about metaphorically making hay while the sun shines that takes its lyrics from the version recorded by Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson and originally featured on the 1986 EFDFS-sponsored cassette ‘Will’s Barn’.
Not the Led Zeppelin song, Quinn is the featured voice on ‘Down By The Seaside’, a particularly obscure Roud broadside ballad in which a man recalls encountering a maiden on the shore lamenting the possible loss of her absent lover. A departure from the British folk, Hardingham provides a robust and lusty virtually solo reading of the whaling shanty ‘Rolling Down To Old Maui’, Stone taking over for the walk along rhythm arrangement of the comedic hunting song ‘Three Old Jolly Sportsmen’ wherein the fox comes off best. He’s also upfront for the two subsequent numbers, the stirring ‘White Cockade’ wherein a girl laments for her lover who’s enlisted and which is grounded in a tradition dating from the 17th century when soldiers of the Stuart kings would wear a white ribbon, the Jacobites continuing to do so after the overthrow of King James II. That’s followed by another historically-based song, ‘Peterloo’, one of many broadside ballads penned in the aftermath of the August 1819 massacre when the cavalry of the Yeomen charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, killing 18 and injuring between 400 and 700, the song a setting of ‘Poem On Peterloo’ with its call “Britons be firm, assert your rights, be bold/Perish like heroes, not like slaves be sold/Be firm and unite, bid millions be free”, the three voices singing ‘shouts for freedom’ in descending succession.
On a gentler note, Hardingham’s final lead performance is not actually a traditional ballad, the romantic ‘Sweet Thames Flow Softly’ having been written by Ewan MacColl as part of an experimental production by the Critics Group for a 1966 BBC schools broadcast based on Romeo and Juliet, and eventually the title of the group’s 1967 album, the lyrics following the river’s flow and the narrator’s courtship and mentioning Woolwich Pier, Blackwell Point, the Isle of Dogs, Greenwich, Limehouse Reach , Shadwell Dock, Wapping, Hampton Court and Richmond Park, Sadly come the end the tide changes and she leaves him.
No relation to its Derby swinish counterpart, Unto The Sky ends with Quinn leading the trio through a gloriously galumphing reading of the more obscure ‘The Horsham Ram’, a wonderful number that grows in exaggeration (or indeed ringle ding a ding lies) with each verse, a m marvellous send off for what is a strong contender for traditional folk album of the year.
Mike Davies
Artists’ website: www.culverake.bandcamp.com/album/unto-the-sky
‘The Reedcutter’s Daughter’ – live:
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