MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Folk album reviews with Steve Johnson
The Star reviews Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds's Singing It All Back Home, Folklaw's We Will Rise, and Hickory Signals's Turn to Fray
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds
Singing It All Back Home
(Dusty Willow)
★★★★
THE MUSIC of the Appalachian mountains has its origins in many old English and Scottish folk songs which found their way across the Atlantic as a result of migration and this album, a collaboration between Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds of The Men They Couldn’t Hang, pays fitting tribute to that legacy.
Traditional opener I Must and Will Be Married is followed by new interpretations of classic folk songs like Hangman and Foggy Dew. But the highlight is the version of the tragic ballad Matty Groves, a near-perfect example of the art of storytelling in song with its tale of doomed love across the class divide.
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