CD Review: Nightfall, Quercus (ECM, 2017)

Quite a lot’s been said, in recent years, about so-called “Slow Cinema”, the minimalist, observational aesthetic that characterises a certain strand of contemporary filmmaking, including work by the likes of Tsai Ming-liang, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Apichatpong Weerasethtkal and Bela Tarr. While there’s no denying that the films of these directors are challenging, and may, at their weakest, induce frustration, there can also be something gloriously subversive about their languorous approach and the way that it requires the viewer to take their time, to look closer and really work with the images. Indeed, Thomas Elsaesser sees the form as “an act of organised resistance” (analogous to the “Slow food” movement) that challenges the hyper, fast-cut style of most contemporary filmmaking - and, I would add, the incessant, damagingly choppy experience of online activity,  referred to by James Wolcott as “the hyperspace of attention-deficit culture.”

If there’s a musical equivalent to the profound pleasures offered by “Slow Cinema” at its best, then one prime exponent is Quercus, the folk jazz trio comprising June Tabor (vocals), Huw Warren (piano) and Iain Ballamy (saxaphones). A wonderful sense of spaciousness and expansiveness, an attentive, meditative quality, characterises this group’s music, and the results are deeply restorative and rewarding. 

Art cinema has often been cited by Tabor as an influence on her work; after all, her second solo album, Ashes and Diamonds, was named for the final part of Andrzej Wajda’s “War Trilogy”, while the elliptical, image-rich qualities of folk ballads (and some contemporary song writing, such as Lal Waterson’s and Bill Caddick's) have been compared by her to film narrative, something that she discussed with me in interview back in 2011. The cinematic aspects of Quercus’s work have to do with ambience, the way in which they offer the listener spaces to pause and reflect. Instant easy-listening the album is not. But the deeper you dig, the richer the findings.

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Tabor and Warren have, of course, been collaborating fruitfully since the 1980s, but Ballamy is newer to the fold, completing the trio after appearing on Tabor's 2005 release At the Wood’s Heart. The fruits of the group’s labour were first released on their self-titled debut album – a 2006 live performance finally issued by the great ECM label in 2013. From its artwork to its content, Nightfall feels like a complement to, and extension of, that record. (Th title comes from Edward Thomas’s poem “In Memoriam (Easter 1915)”: “The flowers left thick at nightfall in the wood/This Eastertide call into mind the men,/Now far from home, who, with their sweetness should/Have gathered them and will do never again.”) 

From the first spare opening note, Ballamy, Warren and Tabor continue to bring out the best in each other; their combination of elements – metropolitan jazz/classical stylings wedded to songs of tradition (mostly drawn from Somerset sources this time) – proves, once again, intoxicating. The group’s distilled approach, in which every note counts, doesn’t result in austerity: instead, there’s a stealth sensuality to the record, evident in Warren’s lithe and rhythmic piano work, in Ballamy’s billowing, shadowing sax playing, and in the commanding intensity of Tabor’s magnificent vocals.

As on the first album, the opening track here is from Robbie Burns’s pen: this time the venerable “Auld Lang Syne”, pleasingly defamilarised with a subtly altered tune, the song is shifted from its usual employment as a hearty singalong to an intimate, deeply personal expression. The misty ambience conjured on “On Berrow Sands,” would have fitted comfortably on Tabor’s great sea-themed album Ashore, the track revolving around the hypnotic, trancelike repetitions of the gulls’ warning to sailors. There’s a similar attention to atmosphere on the captivatingly languid “The Shepherd and His Dog” on which an otherworldly arrangement renders an everyday pastoral scene mystical and mysterious: a passage from Hardy as directed by Ingmar Bergman.

The album’s centrepiece is a thrillingly dramatic and powerful rendering of “The Manchester Angel”. The song starts off looking like it’s going to be about a faithless soldier’s seduction of “a pretty young doxy” but twists into a tale of war as separator. Tabor delivers a series of negations with stunning power, and Ballamy’s sax soars with the heroine’s resolution. And I’ve never heard a better version of “The Cuckoo”, the song treated to a twinkling, delicate arrangement that does the floating verses ample justice – as intimations of Love Gone Wrong are offset by the birds’ recipe for happiness: “we are single and free”.

The more contemporary material – including two terrific instrumental duets composed by Ballamy and Warren - also compels. A biting “You Don’t Know What Love Is” is directed inwards and outwards in just the right way. Wistful sax and piano re-purpose Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”, as Tabor’s vocals shift through irony, scorn, amusement and acceptance.  Personally I could live without another version of Sondheim/Bernstein’s West Side Story warhorse “Somewhere” (which closes the album), but Tabor’s control and dramatic power succeed in bringing some freshness to the piece.

That’s true of all the tracks here, in fact. In a cluttered, pushy, snap judgement-dependent culture, Nightfall captivates by slowing us down, giving us room to breathe, making us listen closely and thereby experience these songs afresh. It's a glorious record. 

CD Review: Quercus (Tabor/Ballamy/Warren, ECM Records, 2013)

2011 proved, even by her high standards, a terrific year for June Tabor, one bookended by the release of two of her finest-ever recordings: the exquisite, sea-themed Ashore (review here) and her long-anticipated second collaboration with Oysterband, Ragged Kingdom (review here). The latter deservedly scooped Best Album at the BBC Folk Awards in 2012 and Tabor was – just as deservingly – once again named Folk Singer of the Year at the same ceremony. The momentum generated by those two great releases has seen Tabor sign up for lengthier-than-usual touring duties in the past couple of years, and prove her ability to rock out with the best of them in her thrilling gigs with the Oysters across the UK.

The performances on Tabor’s latest release actually predate her reunion with John Jones and co, though, and find her in more customarily minimalist – though no less commanding – mode. Quercus (Latin for “oak”) is a trio made up of Tabor, her longtime pianist/arranger Huw Warren and saxophonist/composer and Food co-founder Iain Ballamy (who featured on Tabor’s 2005 album At the Wood’s Heart). The group undertook a series of concerts in this format in early 2006, and the new release draws from one of those shows, presenting performances from a gig at the Anvil in Basingstoke. Not that you’d necessarily identify this as a concert recording just from listening to the CD. For, as on Tabor’s 1997 classic aleyn, the sounds of the audience have been removed (the occasional light cough notwithstanding) to prevent distractions and to place the focus firmly on the performances. The result is a wonderfully fruitful and distinctive collaboration.

Stylistically, Quercus finds June at the jazziest she’s been since 1999’s A Quiet Eye (her album with the Creative Jazz Orchestra) - or maybe even since 1989’s album of standards, Some Other Time. (That's a record that someone really should get around to reissuing soon, by the way.) Jazz, of course, has informed her singular “chamber folk” approach ever since she hooked up with Warren in the late 1980s. But, accompanied solely by his piano and Ballamy’s tenor and soprano saxophones, the influence is at its most unmistakable here. That said, the album’s sound isn’t, at first hearing, wildly dissimilar to the kind of aesthetic that the singer's honed over the past 25 years, while the material – drawing on poems, standards, Ballads and (Les) Barkers – tackles treasured Tabor topics: war, death, Love Gone Wrong. But subtle distinctions do emerge, for the trio’s approach, with its compelling mixture of precision and improvisation, fleshes the songs out into little suites that produce a range of fresh textures, often edging into classical terrain. (In addition, there’s also a higher-than-usual proportion of songs focusing on Love Gone Right here, but more about those anon). There is, throughout, a subtle sense of experimentation and exploration to the endeavour. By turns delicate, grave, and brimming with passion, Warren’s piano-work has seldom been more luscious, or more orchestral in its range and breadth, while, brought to the forefront, Ballamy’s saxophone-playing proves a simply stunning complement to Tabor’s inimitable dusky contralto, with its breathtaking control and remarkable dramatic power.

Warren, Tabor, Ballamy (Photo: Tim Dickeson)

Thoughtfully structured, the album opens where At The Wood’s Heart closed: with a velvety rendering of “Lassie Lie Near Me” that - even more overtly than the album version - transplants Robbie Burns’s anthem of seduction from a familiar pastoral setting into a smoky jazz dive. The traditional “As I Roved Out” is exquisitely restrained and quietly devastating, with precise piano, plaintive sax and a shudderingly intense yet dreamy vocal cutting right to the heart of this classic of thwarted love. Ballamy and Warren’s instruments dance nimbly through both Barker’s “Who Wants the Evening Rose?” and George Butterworth’s setting of A.E. Housman’s “The Lads in their Hundreds,” the latter suggesting youthful innocence about to be swept aside by the turmoil and horror of war. Following it, Warren’s John Dowland-inspired instrumental “Teares” is a thing of aching, shimmering beauty whose title names the emotional response that the piece both evokes and provokes, cleansing the listener.  

A gorgeously extended take on Mack Gordon and Harry Warren’s “This Is Always” suits the song’s celebration of enduring love. And it’s doubtful that the year will yield a more warmly, maturely romantic track than the closing rendition of “All I Ask of You,” Barker’s spare adaptation of Gregory Norbet’s text stretched to a glorious, embracing eight minutes. In contrast, Tabor takes “Brigg Fair” solo in one of her rivetingly direct a cappella performances that make it feel like the whole world just stopped in deference.

A few tracks require – and reward – more work from the listener. The trio’s coal-black take on Feste’s “Come Away Death” from Twelfth Night sounds forbiddingly austere on a first listen, but gradually reveals itself to be a deeply humane and soulful performance, as Tabor and Ballamy's tight "duet" gives way to spirited riffing when Warren joins in.  Billowy sax and wintery piano float around the image-rich floating verses of “Near But Far Away” in a reading that’s full of misty ambience. The track I’ve found myself returning to most, though, is David Ballantine’s deeply mysterious “A Tale From History (The Shooting)”. I’m not sure to what event the song alludes, specifically. But shifting from delicate, wistful verses to seething, impassioned choruses, the trio’s interpretation conjures a vivid sense of sudden violence intruding into everyday routine that feels all but timeless, and that cuts bone-deep. Rich and resonant, inhabited with soul-stirring skill by seasoned performers, the songs here are all  “tales from history” that connect with the listener in this direct way, and that captivate with the intensity, grace and depth of feeling with which they are delivered.

Quercus are currently touring. Further information here.

Review of 2011: Music - 10 Favourite Albums

2011 turned out to be a year in which the majority of my most beloved artists put out an album (or even two). This meant that I didn’t end up making many new musical discoveries this year - and still have many 2011 releases to catch up on (Ryan Adams, M83, St. Vincent, Metronomy, Camille... I'll get to you). But it did offer the very great compensatory pleasure of finding old favourites continuing to surprise, delight and inspire by producing some of their best-ever work. What’s more, in their attention to structure, transitions, pace and song-by-song flow, most of the records featured here prove conclusively that there’s plenty of life in the album-as-art-form yet, despite claims to the contrary. To quote the venerable Mr. Sexsmith: “This ain’t no random shuffle/There’s reason in these rhymes …”



Night of Hunters, Tori Amos

Tides and waves. Fires and storms. A relationship hitting the rocks. A 3,000 year flashback.  Epiphanies. Imperatives. Blood by your thorn. A fox, a fire muse, and a constellation show the way. Adapting classical pieces by composers including Schubert, Granados, Bach and Satie and recruiting a select band of collaborators to help realise her vision (including the phenomenonal Apollon Musagete Quartett, currently ripping it up with her on tour every night), Amos’s latest opus of empowerment is a stunning  thing: by turns dramatic and delicate,  full of grit and grace. One of her finest achievements, it's an exquisite long night’s journey into day - and one that might just have created a few new classical music converts as well.  Full album review here. Live review here.



Ashore, June Tabor



Ragged Kingdom, June Tabor and Oysterband

"If you don’t like June Tabor then you should just stop listening to music," advised Elvis Costello. A little over-zealous, perhaps, but 2011 certainly proved to be a rather good year to be a Tabor fan. An appropriately immersive experience, Ashore, Tabor’s brilliant album on maritime themes, requires and deeply rewards the listener’s commitment. The choice of material is superb (a seamless mix of the political and the personal, the ancient and the contemporary, the intimate and the epic), the singing characteristically sublime, and the spacious arrangements so richly evocative that you may feel the need to bundle up in a big cuddly warm jumper every time you put this album on. If I had to pick just one song for the ages it would be the dolorous, windswept take on Cyril Tawney’s “The Oggie Man,” an indelible vision of human transience compressed into a chorus and two crisp verses. But from the stately re-visiting of  “Finisterre” to the  widescreen 11-minute close of “Across the Wide Ocean,” Les Barker's great song about the Highland Clearances,  there are no weak links on this ship. Ditto for Tabor’s long-anticipated second collaboration album with Oysterband, a vibrant reunion that even exceeded the glories of Freedom and Rain (1990) for me. Full reviews here and here.

Claire Denis Film Scores 1996-2009, Tindersticks

Another place to set up home, this one. I wasn’t fortunate enough to see Tindersticks perform live this year but this six-CD collection of their stunning soundtracks for Denis’s films was compensation enough. Full review here.

The People's Key, Bright Eyes

“You got a soul? Use it.” Catchy but contemplative, sketching both tough and redemptive times on the way to the Apocalypse, the songs on The People’s Key are some of the sharpest and most substantial that Conor Oberst has written.  The sound is cohesive yet diverse. Check out the thrilling stabby guitar-work in “Jejune Stars,” the heavy chug of “Haile Sellassie,” the steely crawl of “Approximate Sunlight,” the beautiful echoy piano intimacy of “Ladder Song,” and, especially, the utterly gorgeous electro-rock exuberance of  “Triple Spiral.”  Even the portentous Malick-ish spoken word segments - musings on time, the universe, and the whole damn thing - have grown on me by this stage. I sincerely hope that this isn’t, as has been claimed, the last Bright Eyes album. But if it so proves then Oberst, Mogis and Walcott have gone out on a high with this great offering.

Hard Bargain, Emmylou Harris

The Harrow & the Harvest, Gillian Welch

Three of the most loved and respected artists in contemporary country music (aka the O Brother Sireens) released new albums this year. As usual Alison Krauss’s record with Union Station didn’t get far beyond the “pleasant” box, for me, and wasn’t an album that I felt compelled to return to that often. But Emmylou Harris’s Hard Bargain and Gillian Welch’s The Harrow & the Harvest have continued to absorb and beguile throughout the year. The artists’ approach seems similarly minimalist, with just two musicians accompanying Harris on Hard Bargain and Welch and David Rawlings returning to their patented duo format for The Harrow… after the more expansive sound developed on their recent work. But the results couldn’t be more different: the underrated Hard Bargain turned out to be Harris’s most ambient and fullest-sounding release in some time, its clear-eyed confessions and poignant remembrances cloaked in lovely sonic layers, while The Harrow & the Harvest was quiet and hushed, offering a series of distilled hard-luck tales that combined the mythic and the everyday with consummate ease. Americana classics, both. And two very cool album covers, to boot. Full reviews here and here.



Bon Iver, Bon Iver

“Wake up to your starboard breath”? “Sat down in the soup”? Surely not? As readers of this blog might be aware, I’m a fan of “bad” diction - when it comes to singing, at least. And the fact that I can barely make out a word that Justin Vernon is intoning on Bon Iver - an effect accentuated by the recourse to over-dubbing -only adds to the fascination and beauty of its haunting, gauzy songs to me. A gorgeously atmospheric work; very special. "Towers" is favourite.

Suck It and See, Arctic Monkeys

What’s always set Arctic Monkeys apart from the (many, many) guitar bands who appeared in the noughties  is Alex Turner’s particular lyrical genius. (I’d nominate Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not [2006] as one of the best-written rock albums ever.) There’s less of that genius on display on Suck It and See, it must be said : recorded in the States (like its predessor, the brawnier Josh Homme-helmed Humbug [2009]) this album bleaches some of the gorgeous Britishness out of Turner’s lyrics and out of the band’s sound which is smoother and slicker here. Still, the stand-out moments - “She’s Thunderstorms,” “Black Treacle,” “Library Pictures,” “Piledriver Waltz,” and “Love is a Laserquest” - convince me that this is a band I’ll always have a soft spot for.

Cinderella's Eyes, Nicola Roberts

A list book-ended by redheads, therefore. A stronger singer might give the surprisingly sparky lyrics the punch they deserve. But for the most part Ms. Roberts acquits herself admirably on this very enjoyable solo debut, an album that contains several of my favourite pop songs of the year. Rhian Jones, of Wears the Trousers, sums up the album's appeal best: “It’s like finding extracts from The Bell Jar slipped inside a copy of Heat.” Cream of the crop: "Gladiator."

Honourable mentions: Don’t Stop Singing (Thea Gilmore), Let England Shake (PJ Harvey), Long Player, Late Bloomer (Ron Sexsmith), American Folk Songbook (Suzy Bogguss), Horses and High Heels (Marianne Faithfull), Walk (Israel Cannan), 50 Words For Snow (Kate Bush). And, from 2010, but not heard until this year Olympia (Bryan Ferry) (oh, “Alphaville”!) and Have One On Me (Joanna Newsom). (With thanks to moviesandsongs365 for finally convincing me on the Newsom front.)

Concert Review: June Tabor & Oysterband (Queen Elizabeth Hall, 14/9/2011)

It may have taken them over two decades to get around to recording a follow-up to their 1990 album Freedom and Rain, but June Tabor and Oysterband have intermittently reunited for live shows in the intervening years, "never losing touch" with each other’s music, as Tabor noted in a recent interview. This deep rapport and connection was clearly evident last night in Tabor and the band’s superb show at Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, the first in a tour in support of that long-awaited new album, Ragged Kingdom [reviewed below]. The show served as a launch of sorts for the new record, with Oysters front-man John Jones confessing rather sheepishly that this was the first time that they had performed many of these songs for an audience.

No signs of anxiety showed through in the performances, however. For, from the galloping, powerhouse opener “Bonny Bunch of Roses” to the impeccably elegant closing lullaby “Put Out the Lights,” Tabor and the band delivered a thrilling show that was controlled and polished yet wonderfully loose and spontaneous.

The set-list combined tracks from Ragged Kingdom and Freedom and Rain, with a couple of Oysters originals added to the mix. Avoiding Dad-rock stolidity, the band played with vigour and passion throughout, Dil Davies’s sturdy drumming, Ian Telfer’s outstanding, soulful violin-playing, Alan Prosser and Al Scott’s guitar-work and the efforts of the multi-tasking Ray Cooper (cello, mandolin, bass) giving the material an exciting mixture of folk grace and rock grit, and beautifully complementing Tabor’s magnificent vocal performances. Jones’s singing matched Tabor’s in drama and intensity, especially his stunning, keening solo on “Molly Bond,” while, backed by Cooper’s mournful cello and Prosser’s delicate guitar, the pair’s duet on Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” proved predictably emotive. Cooper, Prosser and Telfer provided chants and harmony vocals for several songs, including an ambient “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” a reeling “Susie Clelland” and a heart-rending “(When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen,” their contributions adding deep hymnal textures to the already rich material.

The force of the performances succeeded in rendering the diverse song selections - from broadside ballads to late-’60s psych-rock - cohesive, with epoch-spanning tales of war, loss and Love Gone Wrong presented as a seamless story. The most daring transition was between the Oysters’ thunderous, percussive take on “The Bells of Rhymney” and Tabor and Prosser’s timelessly restrained and haunting rendition of “The Hills of Shiloh,” while other highlights included a deft, jangly “If My Love Loves Me” and an ineffably sultry “Mississippi Summer.” And I doubt that there’s been a cooler spectacle on the QEH stage this year than that of Tabor and the band tearing into Jefferson Airplane’s immortal Alice/LSD classic “White Rabbit” at the encore, which she introduced with a hilarious anecdote about performing the song in San Francisco in the early ’90s.

Indeed, throughout the night the bleakness of much of the songs’ subject matter was off-set by the warmth and affection of the band’s interplay, and by Tabor’s wonderfully wry gallows humour. (A story involving a “Goth baby” definitely deserves another outing.) The result was a richly enjoyable concert that held the audience in thrall from beginning to end. “Every place that I have been/Leaves its message on the skin,” sang Tabor on the closing “Put Out the Lights.” The same might be said of all of the indelible songs sung on this spell-binding evening, by some of Britain’s finest. Don’t miss the chance to catch these guys if they’re performing round your way.

Set-list:

Bonny Bunch of Roses
Fountains Flowing
All Tomorrow’s Parties
Love Will Tear Us Apart
If My Love Loves Me
Molly Bond
That Was My Veil
(When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen
Susie Clelland

Interval

Judas (Was A Red-Headed Man)
Son David
Mississippi Summer
Bells of Rhymney
The Hills of Shiloh
The Leaves of Life
Where the World Divides
Dark-Eyed Sailor
Seven Curses

Encore:
Dark End of the Street
White Rabbit
Put Out the Lights

Details of tour dates and venues here.

CD Review: Ragged Kingdom (June Tabor and Oysterband)

Not content with having delivered one of the year’s finest albums in the magnificent Ashore [review and interview here and here], June Tabor now returns with her second record of 2011, re-teaming with Oysterband for a highly enjoyable (and long-anticipated) sequel to their 1990 collaboration album Freedom and Rain. Placing Tabor’s unique voice - mostly associated with stark, or indeed a cappella musical settings - in the context of Oysterband’s lively, brawny brand of folk-rock, Freedom and Rain expanded the musical horizons of both singer and band, offering covers of songs by artists as diverse as Billy Bragg, The Velvet Underground, Shane McGowan and Richard Thompson alongside a smattering of traditional material.

Twenty-one years on, the set-up remains much the same on Ragged Kingdom, although the ratio of old-to-new material is more balanced here, the new album’s twelve tracks comprising seven traditional numbers and five contemporary songs, seamlessly sequenced. Benefiting from the many years of musical exploration undertaken individually by Tabor and the Oysters, the new record also boasts a wider tonal range than its predecessor, as well as a fuller, richer, more organic sound; play Freedom and Rain straight after listening to this and the older album sounds just a tad “tinny” by comparison.

Proceedings open in fine style with a rollicking take on “Bonny Bunch of Roses,” the venerable broadside that presents an imagined conversation between Napoleon’s second wife, the Empress Marie Louise, and their war-mongering young son. The band settle into an imperturbable gait and Tabor tears into the lyrics with gusto, ensuring that the song’s cautionary vision of “Moscow … a-blazing” is fully communicated to the listener. Her awesome dramatic power is put to equally good use on a brooding, full-blooded version of The Wicker Man-evoking Somerset carol “Judas (Was A Red-Headed Man),” with sublime fiddle work from Ian Telfer and Alan Prosser, while other highlights on the trad. side include fresh, spirited interpretations of “Son David” (another mother/son duologue), “If My Love Loves Me,” and “Fountains Flowing.”

“We have long been fascinated by the mystery, magic and mayhem in traditional song,” note Tabor and the band in the liner notes. “But the impulse to tell strange stories never goes away.” War and the travails of love remain two of the primary thematic concerns on Ragged Kingdom and provide a bridge from the oldest to the newest tracks. The taut take on PJ Harvey’s and John Parish’s “That Was My Veil” packs a fiercer punch than the muted original, and Tabor’s emphatic delivery of the final “Lies!” is prodigious. As on Freedom and Rain the band don’t swamp Tabor’s genius for nuance when at their noisiest, except perhaps on the slightly clunky version of Bob Dylan’s “Seven Curses” that’s included here, a reading that somehow fails to really tap in to the song’s tragic narrative.

It’s ultimately the album’s quieter moments that resonate most profoundly, though. Tabor’s and John Jones’s gloriously dolorous duet cover of Joy Division’s immortal “Love Will Tear Us Apart” has been a highlight of their live shows for several years now, and it fully retains its impact on record, while Shel Silverstein’s and Jim Friedman’s Civil War saga “The Hills of Shiloh” gets a marvellously spare and spectral acoustic guitar-led treatment that’s reminiscent of some of Tabor’s work with Martin Simpson.

And the a cappella “(When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen” is the most haunting thing here - a moving tale from the perspective of a young mother who warns against submitting to the desires of “the plough-boys in the gloaming.” Chips Moman's and Dan Penn’s illicit-lovers staple “The Dark End of the Street” may seem a lightweight choice of finale by comparison, but Tabor and Jones offer an elegant, understated reading that tips its hat to Richard and Linda Thompson’s version of the song while also carving out its own distinctive niche.

In sum, Ragged Kingdom is a most welcome addition to both Tabor and Oysterband’s catalogues, a stirring offering that succeeds in bringing “strange stories,” old and new alike, to vivid, compelling life.

Ragged Kingdom is released on 19th September, through Topic. Tabor and the band are undertaking an extensive tour in support of the album, and I’ll be reviewing their show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tomorrow night. Further details on tour dates and venues here.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.

See the Sea: An Interview with June Tabor

See The Sea: An Interview with June Tabor

Over her 40 year career, June Tabor has carved out a singular place on the British folk scene, and beyond. She’s an interpreter par excellence of everything from Anglo-Scottish ballads to French chansons, jazz standards, comic songs, and material by writers including Richard Thompson, Bill Caddick, Lal Waterson, Elvis Costello and Les Barker. Add to this her collaborations with Maddy Prior, Martin Simpson, the Oyster Band and the Creative Jazz Orchestra, among others, and the result is a staggeringly rich and accomplished body of work. The signature, throughout, is Tabor’s extraordinary voice: a hauntingly low and expressive instrument that can warm and chill, convey imperious detachment and burning passion, and dig deeply into the soul of a song, powerfully transmitting its emotions to the listener.

Dubbed “chamber folk” by one commentator, Tabor’s unique jazz- and classical-inflected approach to the tradition has been honed across concerts and recordings with her regular musicians, including Huw Warren (piano), Mark Emerson (viola/violin), Andy Cutting (accordion) and Tim Harries (double bass). It’s this line-up that shines again on Tabor’s latest album, Ashore [review], another glorious piece of work whose thirteen beautifully measured and atmospheric tracks explore maritime themes. I had the pleasure of catching up with June over the phone for Wears the Trousers to talk about the new album, cannibalism at sea, gender politics in traditional music, and exactly what a good song can do.

AR: Firstly, I wanted to congratulate you on Ashore. It’s another fantastic piece of work and I’ve been totally absorbed by it over the past few days. You’ve recorded many songs that have referenced the sea in some way over the years, why did you decide to focus an entire album on songs dealing with those themes and images?

JT: The album really came into being out of the Queen Elizabeth Hall concert in 2009. That was a show to celebrate Topic Records’s 70th anniversary. Topic asked me to contribute and it was up to me to do exactly what I wanted - great! So I started to think about material … We’d come to the sea, musically, a few times before, just because there are so many different kinds of songs that can be connected under that theme. Linking songs, I’ve found, can shine new light on older material; it can make you think again about songs that you thought you knew. So I started looking at the repertoire, and then to think about material that we hadn’t performed before, and would like to. I also started to think about the relationship of the British people, specifically, to the sea. And of course Topic is a very British label; they’ve done so much to promote and celebrate the music of these islands. So that seemed appropriate too. And when it came to thinking about a new record this seemed the obvious solution. It’s such a fascinating area, so rich and diverse. I don’t make albums because I have to; I make albums when I want to make them, when I think “This is something special, something I want to share.”

Where does your fascination with the sea stem from do you think?

Probably from the fact that I was born nowhere near it! As a Midlander I was born about as far away from the sea as it’s possible to get, though of course we in Britain are never very far from the sea; it’s part of the British psyche in a way. My own relationship with the sea was born of trepidation, really. Just standing and looking out at the sea is so overwhelming. It’s like nothing else. And I still can’t swim!

It’s not in any way a romanticised view of the sea that the album presents, is it? The songs tend to associate the sea with loss and conflict and separation.

And getting eaten!

Indeed! The jolliest song you’ve recorded here is about cannibalism.

Well, precisely. I couldn’t resist that one [“Le Petit Navire”]. At the QEH show, we performed it alongside two other pieces: “The Ship In Distress” - another amazing piece of work - and Thackeray’s “Three Sailors of Bristol City.” Songs dealing with cannibalism at sea were surprisingly popular in the nineteenth century. “Le Petit Navire” is wonderful and I love the fact that although the poor boy does get eaten, they do so with a nice white sauce and a salad.

Very classy and very French! Let’s talk about some of the other songs on the album, firstly the two tracks that you’ve previously recorded: Ian Telfer’s “Finisterre,” which opens the record, and Cyril Tawney’s “The Grey Funnel Line.” Why did you decide to revisit those two, and what were you seeking to do differently with them this time around?

They’re both songs that I’ve loved for many years, since the first time I performed them. And they’ve stayed in the repertoire throughout the years - not constantly, they do come and go - but they’re songs that I’ve always returned to. I loved what Maddy and I did with “The Grey Funnel Line” [on the first Silly Sisters album], and we still perform it that way, but this version is very different. You’ve got Huw’s incredible piano-playing, then Mark’s viola comes in… It creates something very visual, a piece of cinema. I’ve dedicated this version to my friend Mac Brown, who was in the Navy. He said that this song sums up exactly what a sailor feels when he decides to turn his back on the sea. I think that this version speaks so strongly of not wanting to leave, but knowing you have to for your survival as a human being. Very sadly, Mac died before he could hear this version.

With “Finisterre,” the new arrangement really developed around Andy Cutting’s wonderful spacy accordion-playing, and it’s evolved through performing it at various concerts. I picture this version this way: it’s the 1940s and here’s Humphrey Bogart, nursing his drink, gazing out to sea… Again the arrangement, and the way it builds, just give the song another dimension. One of the things I love about this kind of music is that you can constantly find new dimensions in it the more space you give it.

There’s a wonderful sense of atmosphere to the album. I’ve been listening to it sitting in front of the fire, bundled up in a big jumper, with a blanket…

And a hot toddy, I hope!

The record really makes you feel the rain, the gales, the hail, the north wind.

Yes, the weather and the sea are so inextricably intertwined. In the notes to the album I talk about the shipping forecast, that litany of place names, those very matter-of-fact descriptions of the weather, interrupting the Test Match. It’s really a part of our heritage.

Was it a conscious decision to emphasise atmosphere and mood this time around?

Yes, in a way. But ultimately it’s the songs that tell me what to do with them. The words are so strong that they inspire - dictate, really - the approach that we take: the instrumentation, the arrangements, my phrasing.

On this album you’re also returning to material by Elvis Costello who wrote two songs for you in the early 1990s. In this case, though, you’re taking on one of his most iconic songs, “Shipbuilding.” How did you decide on that one?

I really just sit down and let my former-librarian’s mind rove over all the songs that might be possibilities for a project. At the QEH show, we did a suite of songs about war-at-sea, and I thought “Is there a song that talks about war and the sea in more contemporary times?” And I found myself thinking about “Shipbuilding.” Of course it’s a pop song. But it’s an extremely well-written pop song with so many great references. The lines about being “back by Christmas,” the “telegram” and “notifying the next of kin” - they all speak so clearly about ordinary people’s experience of war.

I listened again to Robert Wyatt’s version, and I thought “Well, I can’t see how to do it as well as that…” But then it becomes a bit like solving a crossword clue. I presented the song to Huw and said “Shall we have a go?” We began by stripping it back. Most contemporary songs don’t work well that way; they were written with accompaniment in mind … But this one did work. Huw is so good and so quick and we came up with this version. It’s always risky to take on a song that means so much to people. But hopefully those who like the Robert Wyatt version will also respond to this ... And the images of the Falklands War are still very fresh in people’s minds, not the younger generation of course, but for a great many people. They will tap into those images when they hear the song.

Your treatment of the Child ballad that’s on the album, “The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry," turns the song into this incredible dream sequence, almost.

This one originated when I was asked by Maria Hayes, an artist based in North Wales, to contribute something to a film of her making paintings of seals. I performed a spoken-word piece for the film, and Maria asked if I had any Selkie songs. I thought of this one, looked at it again, and was really struck by it. The Joan Baez version would have been the first that I heard, though that one had a new tune. When Child collected his version it was thought that no tune had survived. But this version was collected from John Sinclair of Flotta in the 1930s.

In terms of the approach, it’s completely improvised. The idea was to set up a kind of parallel story-telling between the accompaniment and the lyrics, reflecting the parallel worlds described in the song. And there’s a spoken-word piece that’s included before the final verse. That’s something that I enjoy doing in live performance. I think it can be quite arresting. And there’s a tradition to it, partly for practical reasons: ie. if the singer forgets the lyrics - which can sometimes happen with these long songs…

I was thrilled to see “Across The Wide Ocean” closing the album. It’s a song that you’ve been performing live for a number of years now, another Les Barker masterpiece. What's the background to this?

Les wrote it as part of his opera The Stones of Callanish which is about the history of emigration from the islands of Scotland. He used translations from the original Gaelic of testimonies of those who were evicted during the Highland Clearances in the nineteenth century. The lyrics come directly from those testimonies.

It’s an incredible piece of work. It’s so graphic, and not only in terms of the images. Those lines: “They hunted us like deer..”; “They said we’d have a farm.” In many cases false promises were made to the emigrants, and many of those who did reach their destination - Canada, mainly - who didn’t die on the journey, found that there were no farms for them there and they starved. The descriptions of the hardship that they suffered … It was, essentially, a form of ethnic cleansing.

The song confronts the pain of that history before bringing it into the present-day in the final verse: “And man still steals from man/The rich take what they can.” It conjures images that we’ve all seen in the press of contemporary emigration, migrants washed up on beaches in Spain. The boat people. All those resonances.

Again, in terms of the approach to recording it, it’s improvised. Huw begins playing, I start singing when I feel like it, and then the other musicians come in. And it’s never quite the same twice.

Ashore is your nineteenth album, I think… How has your approach to making a record changed over the years?

Well, when I started out I hadn’t got a clue! My introduction to making an album was the first Silly Sisters record with Maddy and I remember going into this rather flash studio, with all sorts of equipment, and I wasn’t sure about it at all. Also, I was so used to singing unaccompanied at that stage. In fact, when I came to record my first solo album, Airs and Graces, and the first track “While Gamekeepers Lie Sleeping,” Nic Jones had to put the instrumentation on afterwards; it was the only way that I felt I could do it. He managed it, bless him, but he did say that he turned partially grey in the process.

Eventually, though, I found that the best way for me to record is to do it live, with the musicians. It gets the best results. Even if there’s a mistake, or something goes slightly wrong, it’s a true performance that you’re getting.

No artifice.

Exactly. And I do think that shines through the performances by all the musicians on the albums. Some kind of chemistry - much over-used word, but I suppose that’s what it is - happens under those conditions. Recording in a nice location helps too. A nice big room. With windows.

You’ve always chosen great material to record, whether traditional or contemporary. Do you think that what you look for in material has changed at all over the years?

Yes, probably. But it’s still always about the words first. Strong images, a strong narrative. As I’ve got older economy of lyric has become more desirable, where the song is the most effective distillation of an idea. A song, for me, is like a short story. A good song takes you inside it, and when you’re spat out on the other side at the end, you’re changed.

Have you been tempted to write yourself? I think you’ve said that “Aqaba” with Bill Caddick was the closest you came to that.

I have suggested ideas to people, as with Bill and “Aqaba.” Long ago I did try to write a song: I do still have it and come across it sometimes. I set myself a fairly ambitious task, because it was based on the work of Marie de France, the 12th century writer. It’s a werewolf story, and a really strong piece of material. My aim was to adapt it into English ballad form. But when I got to something like verse forty-three, I thought: “Well, no, this isn’t really working…” I should have got Gabriel Yacoub to do it, but unfortunately I didn’t know him at the time!

Self-criticism comes into it, certainly: thinking that it wouldn’t be good enough. But I do know that I can spot a good song, and that I’m a good interpreter of songs. And of course there are song-writers who don’t perform their own work. So it always excites me to track down a good song and to get it out there to a wider audience. With some singer-songwriters, their work is so personal that it can be difficult for another singer to interpret it. There has to be an element of … detachment, I suppose, in the writing so that I can find a way to make the song my own.

You’ve talked before about the cinematic quality of the great ballads: “Young Johnstone” as Peckinpah meets Kurosawa for example. Is that quality something that you look for in contemporary material as well?

Sometimes, yes. A song like Lal Waterson’s “The Scarecrow” certainly has that. I’ve found that referring to film can be a useful way of explaining something to someone else; it’s often helpful to go to another art form. Though they do always tend to be older films.

A great new one is Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing, which is out here in a few months. As it progresses it feels like this incredible folk ballad, with a bit of ‘Bonnie James Campbell’ at the end.

I’ll make a note of that! “Bonnie James Campbell” is fabulous, isn’t it, a whole film in itself.

You’ve mentioned in the past the resourceful female characters that feature in some traditional songs, “Geordie” for example. Is a feminist dimension something that’s important to you in a song?

It’s interesting, when I was younger I wouldn’t have thought about the feminist or sexist qualities in a given song. But as you get older - and more sensible - you do find yourself thinking more and more about what a song is actually saying. I wouldn’t sing something just because it had a good female character, but there are certainly songs that I wouldn’t sing now, “Prince Heathen,” for example, just because of the violence that’s done to the woman in the song. In the case of “Geordie,” he is such a wet and she just marches in there and says “I’m going to sort this out.” It’s wonderful. These kinds of characters do turn up again and again in traditional songs. Though I’m not sure just how accurately it reflects the reality of the time, given women’s lack of power. As with the “broken token” ballads - those affirmations of faithfulness - there’s probably an element of wish-fulfilment here.

Do you find it more of a challenge to inhabit a song that’s written from a male point-of-view? Or is it more about the emotional content for you?

It’s more about the emotional content, really. And I have sung a lot of songs from a male perspective over the years. With modern songs, though, one sometimes feels less inclined to do that. I was thinking last night about Dylan’s “Girl of the North Country” for some reason… And changing it to “Boy of the North Country” doesn’t really work, though of course people did it. But it just doesn’t sit as well.

One of the great things about traditional music, the big ballads, is that you’re not locked into one perspective as in many pop songs. Listening to your version of “Rosie Anderson”, for example, the way it moves between perspectives is incredible. As a listener, you sympathise with both the male and the female character over those many verses. Again, it’s cinematic.

Yes, it’s another amazing song. “‘My meat I cannot take,’ he said/‘My clothes I cannot wear/For thinking on Rosie Anderson/That once I loved so dear.’”

Kills me every time, that verse. It’s such a powerful image of emotional torment.

And then her descent… Heartbreaking!

I know it’s not a song that you perform these days…

Well, I’ll make a note of it. Perhaps we’ll start doing it again. It might be one to revisit.

How do you think things have changed for women on the folk scene since you started out?

That’s a hard one. I would like to think that it’s less difficult now. The folk scene remains a fairly small world in some ways - it should be much bigger - and it has this independent spirit that has allowed a lot of women to flourish and develop … In terms of younger artists, I’m thinking about someone like Emily Portman; I love the way she approaches songs; I haven’t seen her live yet, but I have her album. Even so, being a female performer isn’t easy. There are still certain preconceptions, I think, about what women should sing, and not sing, and what we’re good at. But it has got better, I’d like to think.

Looking back over your career, is there a particular project or a particular album that you feel especially proud of?

Album-wise, I’d probably say An Echo of Hooves. Or aleyn, which was a concert album, though we edited out the sounds of the audience. Some of the performances there are very special to me. In terms of projects, working with the Creative Jazz Orchestra was a wonderful experience, not only for the songs that ended up on A Quiet Eye, but also those live performances that found their way on to Always.

Such as that phenomenal version of “Casey’s Last Ride.”

What a song! But honestly when I get together with Huw and Andy and Mark and Tim and we’re working on something like “Across The Wide Ocean” that’s such a thrill. I love working with them. It’s a relationship that keeps on getting stronger and better. And who knows where we might go next?

What do you enjoy most about live performance these days?

It’s the interaction - the exchange - between the musicians, me and the audience. Everything lifts, the music goes onto another level… And you think “I’m never going to sing that song as well again!” The last concert at King’s Place, for example, was wonderful. Great piano, great room. Just a wonderful collective experience. Now, that’s the best of live performance. The worst was probably being on a bill with Steve Harley years ago, with no-one listening…

Do you and Maddy ever talk about doing another Silly Sisters album?

We’ve been talking about it for years! When we get together now we discuss songs we might do. But we haven’t got around to it yet.

And I believe you’re recording again with Martin Simpson at the moment.

Yes, just one track on Martin’s new album. We’ve been discussing a few things that we might do for it, and now we’ve decided. I’m heading off next week to work on that.

What do you think about the way people tend to access music these days?

(groans of despair) Well, the good side is that so much more music is available now. It’s much less restricted than it used to be. But you see, when it comes to the Internet…well, I’m a book person. And when it comes to music I don’t really want to hear something that someone’s recorded with love and passion squashed onto one of those MP3 things where you’re losing so much. I have to say that it makes me worried and scared that people might just download an album and in the process are losing about 60% of the glory of the arrangements and the performances. My hope is that people who do download might seek out the record afterwards.

What are your plans for this year in terms of touring?

Not! As usual there will be scattered performances throughout the year. But the conditions do have to be right and it’s not that easy to find the right places… Plus, as I’ve got older, I’ve found that I really don’t enjoy travel as much as I used to. But I do absolutely love to perform live and so there will be some.

Ashore is released through Topic Records on 21st February. 

Review: Ashore by June Tabor (Topic Records)

June Tabor’s last album, Apples (2007), signed off with a rendition of a song by Christopher Somerville called “Send Us A Quiet Night,” a sailor’s prayer that, in Tabor’s stunning, spare version, became a wider, universal appeal for calm and safe passage. That track now feels as much like a conclusion to Apples as an introduction to Tabor’s new release Ashore, a record that takes the sea as its thematic focus. Somerville’s song is just one of many, many tracks referencing the sea that Tabor has recorded over the years, from the “Admiral Benbow”/ “Davy Lowston” double-bill that opens A Cut Above (1980) to the metaphorical stormy waters traversed in Les Barker’s “Sudden Waves” (on Angel Tiger [1992]), not forgetting (who could?) her epic “Sir Patrick Spens” on An Echo of Hooves (2003), which climaxes with its unfortunate hero and his fellow Scottish Lords lying “three miles off Aberdeen [and] fifty fathoms deep” on their ill-fated return voyage from Norway.

But Ashore is the first recording that Tabor has focused entirely on maritime themes. The album has its genesis in the concert that Tabor performed for Topic Records’s 70th anniversary in 2009, and, as such, it’s a record that gestures backwards and forwards in Tabor’s body of work, revisiting some older material from a new perspective while also producing something that feels entirely vital and fresh. Spanning centuries, the selected songs transport the listener from the Caribbean to the Shetland Islands, from the mid-Atlantic to the Plymouth docks. The result is a richly atmospheric, beautifully sequenced and, indeed, immersive experience from an artist who continues to go from strength to strength.

Working once again with her superb regular musicians - Huw Warren (piano), Mark Emerson (viola/violin), Andy Cutting (diatonic accordion) and Tim Harries (double bass) - Tabor continues to hone her jazz and classical-inflected approach to traditional and contemporary material on Ashore. Even as she’s moved far beyond unaccompanied singing, her aesthetic has still tended towards sparsity, and there’s a particularly gorgeous measured spaciousness to the new album’s arrangements, one which allows every single note to resonate, and of course leaves plenty of space for Tabor’s unmistakable vocals, with their spell-binding mixture of subtle nuance and arresting command.

The album’s first track is familiar: Ian Telfer’s “Finisterre,” which Tabor first performed on Freedom and Rain (1990), her collaboration album with the Oyster Band. But the new treatment, building gradually from Cutting’s accordion playing, subtly shifts the song into another direction, adding a new level of mystery  to the piece. A similarly effective makeover is performed on Cyril Tawney’s “The Grey Funnel Line” (first heard on the first Silly Sisters album), which gains fresh depths of wistfulness and longing here as it recounts a sailor’s decision to leave the sea.

Traditional material comes in the form of “The Bleacher Lassie of Kelvinhaugh,” a broken-token ballad variant (ie. one without a broken token) that Tabor first performed in the early days but has never committed to disc, and that gets a marvellously direct and, ultimately, heart-warming a cappella rendition; the transition from this track into “The Grey Funnel Line” is sublime. Art song and folk song fuse on a hauntingly spare and effective rendering of the Child ballad “The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry” which - much like “The Cruel Mother” on An Echo of Hooves - succeeds in turning the piece into an uncanny and unsettling dream sequence. As often on Tabor albums, some choice French-language material also makes its mark: “Le Vingt-Cinquiéme Du Mois D’Octobre” tells of a naval battle over Gibraltar, and Tabor sets about the song with a gusto comparable to that of the troops besieging the French fleet. “Le Petit Navire” - a jolly tale of cannibalism at sea - is also delivered with palpable relish.

The album’s other contemporary songs receive memorable treatments. Against Warren’s spare, jazzy piano Tabor sidles up almost nonchalantly to Elvis Costello’s iconic “Shipbuilding,” deftly avoiding turning the song into any more of a monument while nonetheless producing a powerful, subtly dramatic and distinctive reading. The second Tawney song, “The Oggie Man,” is simply exquisite, a meditation on transience on which Tabor’s dolorous vocal, Warren’s delicate piano and Harries’s understated bass conjure a marvellously misty, nostalgic ambience that evokes the softly falling rain described in the lyrics and soon prompts the listener’s tears.

This attention to atmosphere is evident throughout the album. Combining Ronald Jamieson’s setting of a poem by Jack Renwick with a tune, “Vidlin Voe,” written by Jamieson’s late father Frank, “Winter Comes In” creates a striking evocation of the onset of a Shetland winter, with beautiful interplay between Emerson’s violin and Cutting’s accordion. Undulating piano powerfully conveys the fate of the drowned washed up on the shore, their boots “buried below the tide,” in the chilling “The Brean Lament,” while two marvellously stately instrumentals - “Jamaica” and “I’ll Go and Enlist for a Sailor” - also add texture to the record.

But the most devastating track - the album’s “Sir Patrick Spens” if you will - is saved until last. It’s Les Barker’s “Across The Wide Ocean,” a song based on testimonies of those evicted from their homes during the 19th century Highland Clearances, and a piece that Tabor has been performing live for several years. Across an epic eleven minutes and a slowly building, rich arrangement, Tabor’s extraordinary vocal - at times seething with righteous anger and indignation in the verses, then turning melancholy and reflective in the choruses - channels the anguish of a history of persecution, false promises and forced emigration. It’s a staggering performance and one of many highlights on a fine album that’s another thoroughly rewarding and accomplished addition to Tabor’s superlative catalogue.

Ashore is released through Topic Records on February 21st.

Reviewed for Wears the Trousers.

Read my interview with June here.