Her 23rd album and her first non-seasonal release in six years, When They All Looked Up mixes her settings of traditional songs as well as covers and original material. Opening, Ron Block on banjo and Sam Kelly contributing guest vocals, with ‘How The World Goes’ which is credited to her but, in the notes she says she found it the Roxburghe Ballad Collection, either way it’s a rousingly strummed, cascading chords happy with my lot number (“What care I if it’s riches or rag/From the top of my head to my toes/All that I own will fit in one bag”) where what matters “is love and the joy of my friends” and where you “judge not by your wealth but the hearts you’ve won”.
Again featuring Kelly, the shimmering ‘Today Again’ with its chiming synths is definitely a Rusby original, written for someone in need of support and encouragement that things will get better (“You’ll see the perfect sunrise/Upon a perfect day/You’ll feel it as your heart flies/And you’ll know you found your way/You’ll forget about those dark skies/And the shadows and the rain/Just remember that tomorrow won’t be today again”).
It’s back to traditional pastures with the hushed and haunting ‘Ettrick’, her setting of a 19th century Scottish poem by Alicia Ann Spottiswoode aka Lady John Scott about the cycles of the seasons, love and life, followed by the lilting self-penned ‘Let Your Light Shine’ written as words of encouragement to her two teenage daughters to grow into and always be themselves (“You can buy in you can sell out/You can take time to work it all out/You can run wild, you can be good/Do as you want or do as you should/But let your light shine”), the song featuring cornets and building to an anthemic finale with the 112-strong senior section of the Barnsley Youth Choir, the amusing line “You can dress down, you can show class/Or tell the world to kiss your big……..face” the closest she’s come to swearing in a song.
Another setting of a poem, arranged as a fingerpicked lullaby with just Damien O’Kane on acoustic and electric tenor, ‘The Moon Man’ is a children’s poem written in the early 20th century by Florida’s Mildred Plew Meigs and fancifully imaging the moon as a celestial fisherman casting a net of moonbeams over the ocean. Returning to the traditional repertoire, the softly-sung, slow-swaying ‘Judges And Juries’ is, again from the Roxburghe Collection, a transportation ballad bidding a loved one farewell (“I was never more glad than with my love/When I was settled and free/Now tried for a thief, I only feel grief/No more your sweet face I will see”), Kelly back on vocals with Duncan Lyall on double bass.
Rusby’s albums have always featured a playful streak, whether of her own material or well-chosen covers, the latter being the case here with two numbers, the first, again with double bass and banjo, ‘The Barnsley Youth And Temperance Society’, based on a true Barnsley story that Dublin-born broadcaster and songwriter Shay Healy (he wrote Johnny Logan’s Eurovision winner ‘What’s Another Year’) read about in an Irish newspaper and taught to Shaun Cannon from The Dubliners who lived in Barnsley for several years, Rusby in turn being taught it by her father, the song recounting how, in trying to save the locals from the demons of alcohol, the society accidentally intoxicated the local church congregation (“The vicar tottered down the path and pittled up a tree/The women they were singing lots of things you wouldn’t think/And all the little choir boys were puking in the sink”), resulting on the society being disbanded.
The second, another cover and one she used to sing when she toured the folk clubs playing solo, is Jim Mackie’s ‘The Yorkshire Couple’, the amusing tale of how Amos buys a row of cottages by putting away half a crown every time he and his wife Martha have sex, albeit taking a little longer to acquire the fourth one, but, ‘playing away’, never able to buy the pub at the end of the row only to find she cuckolded him with the milk man, who now owns it.
Played out with a circling fingerpicked pattern, Lyall on keys, Josh Clarke brushing the cymbals and O’Kane on guest vocals, ‘The Girl With The Curse’ is an original that in some ways echoes the song for her daughters in that it seeks to remind that you have the power to walk away from darkness – here possibly an abusive relationship (“Truth he lies, I’ve looked in his eyes/There is no mirth, I know what he’s worth”) – and seek the light (“You should say forgive, and I would say yes/Then I’d lead us out of this God-awful mess/But you won’t, so I don’t/And with my heart behind bars/I’ll go look for the stars”).
Again with Kelly on harmonies, something of a rare number in the traditional canon, collected only once by Cecil Sharp from Harry Richards of Curry Rivel in Somerset in 1904, Rusby learnt the melodically hymnal-like ‘Master Kilby’ from the 1978 recording by Nic Jones, a love ballad that, unusual for the genre, doesn’t have a tragic ending. It ends with one more cover, included to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the miners’ strike and reflective that Rusby comes from mining stock, the hauntingly mournful ‘Coal Not Dole’ is a poem written by Kay Sutcliffe, the wife of a striking miner, and set to music by Paul Abrahams for a play called ‘The Garden Of England’, appropriately warmed by euphonium and the Northern brass sounds of cornet, tuba and French horn, and apparently recorded wearing her miner uncle Stanley’s tweed cap, you can hear the emotion quivering.
Rusby’s gently accented, caressing, understated and soft vocals as sublime as ever, arranged and performed with a class that can only come with musicians have years of shared experience and simpatico instincts, as the title suggests, the stars are shining their blessings.
Mike Davies
Artist’s website: www.katerusby.com
‘Today Again’ – officially live:
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