Call Upon The Author

Folk, in it’s loosest sense, is hot property at the moment. Mumford & Sons profile has skyrocketed over the last twelve months, Laura Marling continues to be held up as an artist who is superior to her peers and the likes of Fleet Foxes continue to sell strongly. Add to this the countless guitar toting troubadours who consistently appear on our musical radar and it appears this ‘classic’ form is undergoing a resurgence.
Here then, we have another folk record, but one that stands a little apart in that these really are old standards. Chris Ricketts and Mark Willshire’s approach is a simple one, guitar, bass and Rickett’s smooth and strangely ageless vocal. For this 8 track preview of their album (and, one would assume the full physical release) the production is minimal, leaving lots of space for the songs to grow.
The songs themselves range from the relatively well known (Sally Brown) to tunes that we hadn’t come across prior to giving this disc a spin. An immediate favourite is Briery Bush, the tale of a man set to be hanged who watches his family appear on the horizon only for each of them to neglect to pay his rnasom, until his true love saves him. It’s a simple format and hardly a taxing orchestration, but it’s this sparseness that allows the song to really have an impact.
Similarly the fairly comedic Drunken Maidens leaves a lasting impression, not least as the blotto pair hail from The Isle Of Wight, always a source of gentle mockery for those of us born and raised in Portsmouth.
Perhaps for those who aren’t already interested in folk music this may be a little samey, but for anyone wanting to hear classic songs presented in a respectful, but still engaging way, I really cannot recommend this enough!