At least that's what we all thought, until. June and the mighty Oysters combo reunited specially for f. Roots' 3. 0th. birthday gig at The Roundhouse, when the spark was so vital that a decision. The delicate qualities of light and shade within June's unique. The place to explore, filter, research, and browse the AllMusic database. Search albums by mood, theme, style, genre, editorial rating, year and more. Listen to music by Parliament on Pandora. Discover new music you'll love, listen to free personalized radio. Bobby Hutcherson, a superb vibes and marimba player and star of the Blue Note roster, passed away on Monday, August 15, at his home in California.
Oysterband, who have of late. Some folk specialists will doubtless. Joy Division number Love Will. Tear Us Apart among the tracklisting - in his defence of which Oysters' Ian. Telfer rightly posits that . Harvey's That Was My Veil. Here, as throughout. Oysterband's ever- thoughtful and. Lighter mando- filled meanderings throw. Son David, while June makes the most of. Shel Silverstein's Hills Of Shiloh with the aid of a. Another highlight, tellingly placed immediately after the sparsely- scored. Love Will Tear Us Apart, is a rather moving. When I Was No But) Sweet Sixteen, learnt from. Jeannie Robertson, which here acquires some attractive. At the other end of the sonic scale. Judas. (Was A Red Headed Man), which steers just the right side of bombast. June's incantatory vocal. Maybe the. more straightahead (Albion- esque?) folk- rock setting of Fountains Flowing. June's unusual twist to the melody we usually hear; after which, The Leaves. Of Life returns us with cantering hoofbeats and glittering mandolins to the. Dylan's Seven Curses before making the. Dan Penn's Dark End Of The Street (a meaningful duet between. John and June which forms an apt album closer). It can be no accident, either, that due to their alphabetical appellation, June's CDs will be destined to automatically remain on one's A- List! . Ashore, her 1. 3th solo recording, is no exception, and affords her audience an aquamarine adventure par- excellence. It presents 1. 3 tracks (1. These are neither easy nor comfortable songs, and, like the sea itself, can be dangerous: beware, for they're bound to immerse you rather than merely wash over you. Thus, the pinpoint accuracy of poised detail in June's performances enables the salty molecules to penetrate your skin with their cool, nay sometimes chilling passion. The impression of aloofness and severity that some folks get from June's stance is but the mature expression of her generous compassion and humanity, her unswerving integrity of purpose. . Musically speaking, the ebb and flow of the tides is abnormally accurately conveyed by the piquant instrumental backdrop to the first song, Finisterre, the exceptional Ian Telfer composition that first appeared on June's celebrated 1. Oysterband (Freedom And Rain). This new treatment is both outstanding and significantly mesmerising, and a hard act to follow . A limpid, sanguine, in fact quite underplayed account of The Grey Funnel Line follows naturally, effacing even my fond memories of June's earlier, quite different version with Maddy Prior (on the Silly Sisters album). June later provides unique insights on another of Cyril Tawney's classics, the supremely wistful The Oggie Man. She also introduces us to the work of Shetland poet Jack Renwick through the grey, almost half- light tones of Winter Comes In (so beautifully conveyed in a telling chiaroscuro conjured by Andy Cutting and Mark Emerson), which is fast becoming one of my favourite tracks. And with her customary sense of idiomatic linguistic accomplishment, June also sings two contrasting items in French: the traditional tale of Le Petit Navire, and Le Vingt- Cinqui. And it can often seem to take a lifetime for a singer to properly come to terms with a song and hone an interpretation with which he or she feels satisfied: Elvis Costello's Shipbuilding is evidently a case in point, for the uncommonly intuitive version enshrined on Ashore would, I would aver, be considered an immediate standout in any illustrious company. But even so, the indisputed highlight of this new collection is the final track Across The Wide Ocean: an epic, expansive, sprawling (close- on- 1. Across The Wide Ocean (which forms part of Les Barker's opera The Stones Of Callanish) on which June excels herself expressively in recounting the testimony of those forcibly evicted during the Highland Clearances of the 1. Huw) excel themselves in parallel in portraying the incessant, restless momentum of the waves. June may have been photographed standing on the shore looking out to sea, but on this song in particular she feels to be more a part of the ocean itself and its swell, as well as literally inside the minds and bodies of the emigrants. This track is arguably the most extraordinary achievement of all those on the CD. . Against the overall great success of this CD I do have one small reservation, which applies in the case of two songs I've not yet mentioned . In the case of the latter more especially, June's very personal account of Child Ballad 1. Huw Warren's strangely unsettling piano counterpoint (depicting a choppy, broken- rippled seascape) seems at first to be disembodied and disconnected, then gradually begins to make sense as the ballad progresses; to my mind, the spoken episode sits uneasily on June's thoughtfully classy (if thorny) interpretation and (I feel) blurs its impact at that point in the tale. . But to sum up: once again the oft- invoked model of classical perfection is the example by which June practises her art, but within that perfection is the indefinable element of necessary rubato that as with the best of lieder practitioners invariably marks each individual performance in time. Here again June remains right at the top of her game, with her vocal armoury (or should I say arsenal?!) ageless and intact; Ashore apostrophises its alphabetical (and allegorical) A- listing as neither affectation nor affliction but their antithesis: absolute aptitude and assurance. The Dancing (by Andy Shanks & Jim Russell), a wonderful composition piquantly conveying the excitement of the lady's prospect of romance at the Saturday night dance (sharing that lyric's theme with Stan Rogers' Lies and Bill Staines' Roseville Fair).
And by heavens (you might say!), there's almost a moment of barely- concealed jollity (yes!) with June's light- tripping rendition of Child 2. The Auld Beggarman), so enticingly contrasting with her matchless treatment of the traditional Scottish love song The Rigs Of Rye that follows in the well- considered sequence. The latter is rivalled, nay eclipsed, by June's unsurpassable interpretation of Lester Simpson's Standing In Line; here, with deceptively understated passion, she so unerringly conveys amidst its potent evocation of sepia- soaked imagery all the associated complex cocktail of emotions: all the bitterness, despair, barely controlled anger amidst that sense of brain- numbing routine and .. The album closer, Christopher Somerville's beautiful, gentle- waves- rocked sailors' prayer Send Us A Quiet Night, is just perfect. June's singing is peerless: precise yet not precious, and careful yet never in any way unresponsive. Needless to say June continues to be on splendid vocal form, and here she's come together with her accompanists to produce a uniformly mesmerising and utterly coherent album.
And as if that weren't enough, on some tracks there are well- judged contributions from Andy Cutting (accordion) and Mark Lockheart and Iain Ballamy (saxes), and it's all reliably underpinned by Tim Harries' sensitively- moulded double- bass work. For instance, there's a distinctly Schubertian air to the piano's short prelude to Ah! The Sighs (a 1. 6th century song of courtly love), giving the piece more of a Romantic resonance than the basic acknowledgement of its source might normally call forth. Interestingly, this contrast is turned on its head when Martin Simpson's poised guitar accompaniment to Heart Like A Wheel invests that song with something of the character of a courtly troubadour ballad, allowing us to concentrate on June's heartbreaking (sorry, there's no other word for it!) interpretation of the lyric. Just over half of the twelve songs are genuinely traditional in origin, and their selection was galvanised by the inspiration June gained from a series of concerts she undertook with this particular group of musicians including an In Session broadcast for BBC4. The repertoire June's chosen contains contrasts aplenty, too, with standout interpretations of Robert Burns' Lie Near Me (the album's final, extended track), Bill Caddick's powerful The Cloud Factory (June's always had a striking empathy with Bill's writing, as you know) and Duke Ellington's Do Nothing 'Til You Hear From Me (to name but three) interpolated with some slightly more uptempo fare such as Oh! Alas I Am In Love and The Broomfield Wager.
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