MAGPIE LANE THE 25th
LADY MAISERY AND JIMMY ALDRIDGE & SID GOLDSMITH AWAKE ARISE: A WINTER ALBUM
Rejoice! Two seasonal CDs by two English five-piece groups of all-singing, multi-instrumentalists to gladden the hearts of humans.
Magpie Lane’s The 25th (a reference both to Christmas Day and to their years as a performing group) is their third festive release, and the band’s annual Christmas concerts at the Holywell Music Room are long-established as a seasonal institution in their home city of Oxford.
Thankfully, they’re showing no signs of running short of either material or ideas across this album’s fourteen tracks, starting with the rousing Sweet Chiming Bells - a Yorkshire version of While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night, learned from Oysterband’s John Jones.
Newton’s Double (a version of Hark The Herald Angels Sing) Sellwood Molyneux Carol and Hark Hark What News are all sung in glorious multiple unaccompanied harmonies, while fiddler Mat Green, concertina player Andy Turner and the rest of the band get to flex their instrumental chops on two instrumental sets A Christmas Tale / Christmas Day In The Morning and Christmas Carousing / Mummers’ Jig and Reel. The latter mentioned comprises tunes from the Isle of Skye and Co. Wexford, Ireland, suggested by erstwhile Magpie Lane (and current Fairport Convention) member Chris Leslie.
Gabriel’s Message - a Basque carol loosely translated by Sabine Baring-Gould, and Down In Yon Forest both feature the exceptional combination of Sophie Thurman’s lead vocals and Jon Fletcher’s exquisite guitar playing. Angelus ad Virginiem finds Thurman singing in Latin - thankfully without a trace of that high church vocal affectation that seems to benight some folk singers at the first whiff of incense.
No Magpie Lane album would be complete without at least one showcase for the deliciously warm voice of Ian Giles. I Am Christmas Time - written by Oxford Folk Club stalwart Pete Joshua, provides the perfect vehicle, enhanced by a wonderfully sympathetic accompaniment from Marguerite Hutchinson’s Northumbrian pipes.
Magpie Lane make music that is as unpretentious as it is accomplished and Colin and Jon Fletcher’s skilled production somehow places the listener amongst singing friends, rather than merely listening to a recording.
Magpie Lane Christmas Concerts
10th December - Ringwood Folk Club
14th December - Holywell Music Room, Oxford (afternoon and evening concerts)
21st December - Byfield, Northants
Awake Arise: A Winter Album combines the considerable talents of Lady Maisery (Hazel Askew, Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans) with Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith in a seasonal collaboration actually worthy of that cliched old term, supergroup. Utilising a similar instrumental palette to Magpie Lane (both include harp, melodeon, concertina, fiddle and guitar) this, as its title indicates, is a Winter, rather than Christmas album.
Songs, instrumentals and spoken-word pieces entwine as beautifully as the performer’s voices. On Robert Burns’ Up In The Morning Early, Hazel Askews’ harp provides the perfect counterpoint to Jimmy Aldridge’s voice before Rowan Rheingans reads Laurie Lee’s The Christmas Road.
Sing We All Merrily - Hannah James’ re-write of a song collected in 1918 by Ralph Vaughan Williams, is an instant, and very welcome ear worm, while tradition and early poetry receive sparkling arrangements in The Snow It Melts The Soonest and Bring Hither Now The Holly Bough. I didn't believe I could ever love another modern rendering of The Old Churchyard (collected from Almeda Riddle) as much as The Murphy Beds with Anna & Elizabeth version on YouTube but, bless my soul, Hazel Askew and her chums might just have managed to persuade me otherwise.
Contemporary songwriting is represented by John Tams’ Snow Falls, Peggy Seeger’s Heading For Home and Rowan Rheingans’ own The Bear Song, while the album’s surprises include Wassail Bowl - a recipe from 1722 for what Robin Williamson once memorably described as ‘a kind of disgusting soup’ and Sid’s taxonomical incantation Winter Berries. Probably the most familiar song on this collection (at least to folkies d’ un certain age with Steeleye Span LPs) is The King. Listening to this album’s wonderfully sparse, gently loping banjo version prompts this listener to opine that if any of us lived in a properly-organised democracy, these five musicians would be every bit as lauded in these times as the venerable Spanners were back in the early 1970s.
Sumptuously packaged in a beautifully-designed book pack, this is an artefact that looks every bit as good as it sounds.
Awake Arise tour dates
14th December - The Stoller Hall, Manchester
15th December - The Whitworth Centre, Matlock
16th December - Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool
18th December - St Mary's Church, Lowdham, Nottingham
19th December - West End Centre, Aldershot
20th December - Kings Place, London
21st December - Central Library Theatre, Sheffield
23rd December - St George’s, Bristol