Most recently seen playing with or supporting Rob Peters, HANNAH BROWN returns to her own music with the self-released I Found Myself. A moody keys, guitars and drums arrangement with a dank forest folk feel she says it “speaks to my awakening beyond societal expectations and criticism, unleashing raw, unfiltered expression from the heart. Eyes wide open whilst venturing deeper into the depths of who I am.” Or to quote the lyric: “I found a path that looked so dark… it felt lonely at first/I found a path and it felt like heaven”.
Becoming increasingly ubiquitous, KATHERINE PRIDDY’s just released Secrets Still Remain via Bandcamp, her fingerpicked atmospheric and spookily sung theme tune to Radio 4’s podcast Uncanny Cold Cases, her soaring ethereal and ghostly vocals set against a stormy soundscape that soars to a dramatic climax before fading to a whispered ending.
For her contribution to this year’s sports-themed 21st Century Folk for BBC Radio 2, she’s also just released The Long Way Home a nimbly fingerpicked, featheringly sung folksy song with puttering drums about Hannah Lancaster who was an elite cyclist and her sister’s carer before sustaining a brain injury in a crash. Now recovered, she’s training to be a fire-fighter and Priddy says the song is her attempt to capture the young woman behind everything, discovering herself on her path to recovery.
And continuing the cycling theme, the lyrics capturing the rhythm and pressure of the race, Cyclone, is a standalone non-album single from DAN WHITEHOUSE with Dave O’Brien to commemorate Marshall Walter "Major" Taylor. An American sprint champion, born in 1878, he set more than 20 world records despite enduring relentless racism and segregation both on and off the track making history as the second Black world champion in any sport and the first African-American to achieve a world championship in cycling. In his notes, Whitehouse wrote the song inspired by Taylor’s self-belief after learning that, at just 18, he was only Black competitor among 28 riders who participated in the Six Day Race at Madison Square Garden, completing 1732 miles on the 0.1 mile track and sleeping only one hour for every seven, all while being pushed and pulled by the other riders and taunted and jeered by the crowd. (www.dan-whitehouse.com)
Dan’s also the driving force behind The Wall People, a community songwriting and storytelling project based at The Priory Community Centre in Dudley. In similar fashion to his project about Stourbridge’s glassmaking heritage, this explores the everyday culture of neighbours (especially those of the Priory and Wrens Nest housing estates) gathering informally on garden walls, front steps and local shops - where conversation, humour and mutual support continue to shape community life in the absence of the pubs, venues and shops that have closed down. Featuring song and spoken word, it was inspired by oral histories and memories of life in the Black Country from residents, among them local butcher Roger Beasley (Williams The Butchers) and salon owner Sharon Haywood (Sharon’s Salon), the project also features new music created by students of St James’ Academy and young people working with hip hop artist Marik Erskine.
It opens with the project title, written by Dan who adds guitar and vocals with Gustaf Ljunggren on piano, mandolin and bass and community voices (Dan’s parents Pete and Brenda included), providing the backing. He’s is also the vocalist and lyrics writer for the semi-spoken Any Old Iron, Williams The Butchers, Sharon’s Salon and Follow Your Star (co-written with Adam Bradley) and co-wrote the rather lovely Bromley Bridge, the vocals here by Jenny Sunter. The strummed Corsican Pine is written and sung by Alex Jones while, feature rap from Erskine, Beautiful Town and Dudley Kingdom write written and inspired by students of St James’ Academy. Finally, with looped spoken word sample from Shane Stevens, Dan’s son Taiga Mori-Whitehouse provides the strings for the spacey beats-led Split An Atom.
The past few years have seen THE LOST NOTES ride an ever-swelling wave from singing at open mic sessions to selling out the 280 seater Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space at Symphony Hall. And it here that, on Feb 4, they recorded Live at Birmingham Symphony Hall, the album capturing the warmth, energy, musical diversity, wit and finesse of their celebrated live shows. The regular full band line-up of Ben Mills (vocals, guitar, harmonica, trumpet, piano), Oli Jobes (vocals, guitar), Lucy Mills (vocals, ukulele), Max Tomlinson (drums) and Pete Churchill (double bass, accordion) was augmented on some numbers by acclaimed jazz pianist Piera Onacko, Rebecca and Simon from opening act The Rosellys on banjo and fiddle and the massed voices of The Choir With No Name.
Mixing material from their three albums alongside songs as yet to get a studio treatment, it opens with familiar set favourite Holdin’On, starting with a slow strummed guitar before breaking out into an up-tempo flurry guaranteed to get the crowd roused. Whisky For Breakfast takes thing in a slower, bluesier direction with Ben on harmonica before Don’t Try It On Me showcases their harmonies and Americana colours. Nudging seven minutes, Lucy on lead, Done With The Waiting with its Anadalcuian guitar intro and Latin jazzed urgency marks the first piano solo showcase appearance by Onacko before Oli takes over for the acoustic swayalong folksiness of A Fool Once Told Me.
Oli again on vocals, the first of the ‘new’ songs comes with the fingerpicked Head Over Heels, another folksy track, followed by the second with Lucy on the smokey jazz bar piano blues of her self-penned Heartache.
Returning to familiar ground, the CWNN joins proceedings for the sha la la la folk pop of Slow Down with its unaccompanied refrain before kicking the pace back up with the swaggering, trumped-coloured country romping Wildman showcasing Churchill’s double bass. .Audience whoops welcome another set favourite with Simon Rosselly joining on fiddle for the bluegrassy galloping Run Like A River, an outlaw on the run after shooting his unfaithful wife and her lover number before committing suicide.
Switching the mood comes the fingerpicked guitar and close harmonies of the glorious Pieces Of A Star, followed by another highlight staple with Ben on peak form for the building bluesy ballad God Loves A Sinner. It’s back to piano for another new number, Ben on lead for the slow and melancholic, gradually swelling We Don’t Need Another Love Song, Lucy showcasing on the addictive toxic relationship number Mine Is The Heart with its melodic and thematic echoes of Diamonds & Rust.
Churchill’s bass get prominence for the jazzed boogie of Hey Maloney with its call and response vocals, another new number the lyrics of which feature the title of their last album, Good Luck Shoes. That album’s the source of the penultimate anthemic front porch country ballad No Place Like Home with its resonant fingerpicked guitar, Onako, The Rossellys and the CWNN returning to the stage for the rousing audience handclapper, all join in seven-minute staple closer Take My Hand. Sadly missing from the night’s set are All At Sea, I Got Time, actual closer Run Free Right Now and the encore, Green Grass, but that’s a bit like a glutton complaining the feast didn’t have enough cream cakes. With a new studio album lined up before the year ends, it’s surely only a matter of time before they’re back to sell out signs on the main stage too.
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Based in Stourbridge, THE CLARKES & Co are Stephen and Sue Clarke, he on guitar, she English concertina, their music acoustic and at times pastoral folk with wry, sometimes witty lyrics about matters of the heart, passing time and, occasionally, politics
The ebb tide of the years is the theme for Save the Pangolin and Nine Other Love Stories’ opening musician-themed circular fingerpicked June Moon Spoon with its talk of youthful self-destructive tendencies (“Climbed the tree for fun/Then you sawed off the branch/The one you were standing on”) and .family fragmentations (“You married your sweetheart, raised a family/Your wife she flew left the nest but your kids are yet to leave”), although it ends though with the positive thought that while the “there’s still time to call the tune/To find the rhyme for June and Spoon” rather than just “howling at the moon in a garden on the edge of town”.
Given a choppy rhythm, Starlings sketches a long-lasting romantic bond though the image of a pair of perching birds “ while, opening with concertina, Coming Home To Me is about finding yourself in memories of the past after losing direction.
The sort of title track, the close harmony fingerpicked ‘Pangolin’ (a scaly ant-eater if you didn’t know) opens with an image of a clay model made by a friend and moves to talk of conservation and potential extinction with it hunted for its meat and medicinal scales.
Another with a circling guitar pattern, the title of the bluesy folk Car Park D (For Chemotherapy) tells its own story with its hospital visit observations while The Man It Happened To takes a similar look at potential mortality (“You won’t see it coming/You won’t hear those blaring horns./It’s too late to get the warning”) with a stiff upper lip response (“When the sky comes down on you/Put on your hat and walk on through…Though you know you’ve lost the game/You go and play it anyway”).
A troubadour Americana number, Rockabye Lullaby is an at least partial post-recovery celebration (“Now the meaning of good news/Has been redefined/Not what we would choose/But I’ll make them friends of mine”) just as Dancing Backwards is about being grateful for what you have and the time you’ve had it. It does though carry hints of a break-up … (“you’re not coming my way/I’m headed for the street/Like that bird on the wire/I think that’s how I tend to feel/The only thing I know for sure/Is who got the better deal”), a suggestion that carries over into the nimbly picked and discordant concertina Between The Thorn And The Rose (“She packed a suitcase, all memories and tears/The worst and the best thing that she had done in years/That’s the way it goes”).
It ends with another realistic but optimistic note with On We Go as Stephen sings “what you get is what you see/It’s getting better for you and me/Books and covers are all on show/Turn the page and on we go…we can grow old now, down by the sea/Watching the boats come in/Watching them sail away - building our stone tower to the toppling sun”.
Exclusively on Bandcamp, Maggie de Monde, aka SCARLET FANTASTIC, is releasing Without Summer Remixed, headed up by a stripped back voice and piano version alongside a New Order-flavoured dancefloor remix by Cold War Cowboys capturing the Balearic club spirit from the late 1980s while Montjuic taps into summer sunsets for a spacey chilled out downtempo poolside mix.
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