Review of Debut solo album from Calum MacColl from Plastic Magazine

Here's a review of  Calum MacColl's - my friend's - CD. The review is published in Plastic Magazine. Here's a link to the magazine.

Calum MacColl

Debut solo album from Calum MacColl

London-based indie folk artist Calum MacColl seemed destined to become a musician due to the rich sonic heritage of his family. The son of folk legends Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, he’s also the half-brother of Kirsty MacColl but he’s ventured on his own unique musical path that’s seen him enjoy a decorated career that spans decades.

Over the years he’s played in various outfits and written for and performed with hundreds of iconic artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Eddi Reader, Backstreet Boys, Ronan Keating and Colin Vearncombe aka Black. Earning a Grammy-nomination for his work as a producer, he also co-wrote the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Best Original Song in 2015.

More recently however, he’s set out as a solo artist under his own name, to bring to fruition his dazzling creative vision. Now ready to share that vision with the world, he brings us his debut full-length record as a solo artist with the aptly titled album About Time.

Featuring ten new recordings that showcase Calum MacColl’s timeless folk songwriting talent and his assured musicianship and vocal performance, across About Time he delivers moments that charm, moments that move you and moments that inspire reflection.

Led by his smooth vocal leads carrying delicately crafted melodic lines and thoughtful lyricism, he enlists an array of traditional folk style instrumentation to capture a sound that’s as engaging as it is enduring to make a thoroughly enjoyable listening experience and a worthy debut effort from a celebrated artist.

Commenting on his debut LP, he shares, “It’s About Time – both the songs and the fact that I’ve only just got around to making this, my first solo album, at the age of 58. I’ve been writing songs all my life, but they’ve invariably been for other people to sing. It never occurred to me that I could sing them myself.”

This Cultural Life: Eliza Carthy

 

Eliza Carthy

Click here for a link to last week's Radio 4 programme This Cultural Life.  

Released On: 28 Jan 2023Available for over a year
Musician Eliza Carthy was born into an English folk dynasty. The daughter of acclaimed folk singers Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, she joined the family business at a young age as a singer and violinist, playing with her parents as Waterson Carthy and with her mother, her aunt Lal and her cousin Marry as The Waterdaughters. As a solo artist and bandleader, Eliza has explored the roots of folk and expanded the repertoire. Awarded an MBE in 2014, she was twice nominated for the Mercury Prize for album of the year, and in 2021 became the president of the English Folk Dance and Music Society.


She tells John Wilson about the first time she attended the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1989, aged 13. Standing on the main stage at sunset overlooking the mountains and sea was a defining moment at the start of her career. She also discusses the influence that singer Billy Bragg and Scottish folk rock band Shooglenifty had on her music. Eliza also talks about the impact of the pandemic on the folk music community and the personal loss of her mother.

Links to two articles about Anthony Joseph: an announcement of his winning the prize, and an article where Joseph writes about the back ground to his winning collection, Sonnets For Albert

 

Anthony Joseph

Click here to read the Poetry Society's announcement of Anthony Joseph's winning the T S Eliot Prize 2022. Click here to read an article Joseph wrote explaining the background to the collection. It can be found on the Poetry Society website. Click here for a link to that website.

Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph wins the T S Eliot prize 2022

 Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph has won the T S Eliot Prize for poetry 2022

Anthony Joseph

Huge congratulations to Anthony Joseph

Here's what the Guardian wrote about Anthony Joseph winning the prize yesterday

Anthony Joseph wins TS Eliot prize for ‘luminous’ poetry collection

Anthony Joseph has won the TS Eliot prize for his collection Sonnets for Albert, described as “luminous” by the judges.

Joseph takes the £25,000 poetry prize, which this year saw a record 201 submissions.

Chair of judges Jean Sprackland, who was joined on the panel by 2021 Costa book of the year winner Hannah Lowe and 2019 TS Eliot prize winner Roger Robinson, said each of the shortlisted books “spoke powerfully to us in its own distinctive voice”.

“From this strong field our choice is Sonnets for Albert, a luminous collection which celebrates humanity in all its contradictions and breathes new life into this enduring form,” she added.

Sonnets for Albert, which was shortlisted for the Forward prize for best collection last year, is an autobiographical collection that weighs the impact of growing up with a largely absent father. Reviewing the book in the Guardian, David Wheatley said that “after much silence and absence in life”, Joseph’s father was “painstakingly restored in death in a book-length ‘calypso sonnet’ sequence”.

Joseph is a poet, novelist and musician, and a lecturer in creative writing at King’s College London.

He is the author of five poetry collections and three novels, including Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon, which was shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness prize and the Royal Society of Literature’s Encore award and was longlisted for the 2019 OCM Bocas prize for Caribbean literature. He has also released eight critically acclaimed albums.

Joseph was chosen as the winner from a shortlist of 10 collections. The others shortlisted included five debut poetry collections: Quiet by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Slide by Mark Pajak, bandit country by James Conor Patterson, The Room Between Us by Denise Saul and Manorism by Yomi Sode.

Also shortlisted were previous winner Philip Gross for The Thirteenth Angel, Fiona Benson for Ephemeron, Jemma Borg for Wilder and Zaffar Kunial for England’s Green.

The 2021 prize was awarded to Joelle Taylor for her collection C+nto & Othered Poems.

Here's Anthony Joseph reading a poem from the collection

Here's what David Wheatley writing in the Guardian wrote in July 2022 about the collection.

Sonnets for Albert by Anthony Joseph (Bloomsbury, £9.99)

“My father died with his mouth open – / gasping for air”, we read in Shame. After much silence and absence in life, the poet’s father is painstakingly restored in death in a book-length “calypso sonnet” sequence. Albert is a rogue, and encounters with him often take place on the run, as when a brother of the poet catches him at the wheel of a van in traffic in Trinidad. Albert responds by badmouthing his brother to the poet: “they way he does talk proper English, Tony, / he talking more English than you!” Others have respectability, but Albert has style and mystique. Joseph’s relationship with his father is profoundly ambivalent, but Sonnets for Albert movingly makes peace with his shade: Albert has “made his cycle”, an aunt tells the poet, “and that was all that was required of him”.

Cover to Cover Introduction and first post Here Comes the Night, Them and David Bowie's cover

Debra    Nicki    David

A long time ago - probably one family Christmas gathering - my sister Debra and me started listing songs we knew that had been covered by another band. We then voted on what we thought was the best recording.

Some time later we invited Nicki - my other sister to join in.

Since then we've taken it in turn posting original songs and a cover of the song to a WhatsApp chat we set up.
We then write a commentary and a judgement about each song.
It's been fun but more importantly it's brought us all a little closer to each other. We all live like - almost everyone else I know - very busy and hectic lives. Our web of connection had become quite thin. Playing wordle almost daily has been fun, but the c2c project has given us an opportunity to go deeper.

Anyway after one commentary and judgement I posted back in October 2022, both my sisters complimented me on the post. So I've decided to post my commentaries to this blog.

I'm not claiming any special gift, talent or skill in writing these commentaries. I'm just listening and commenting on what strikes me about the songs. Sometimes it's the lead voice, sometimes the band, or the lyric or the pace of the song. 

I'm gonna post them here cause it's a fun thing to do. It's also a way of celebrating my two wonderful sisters who have supported me through a very rough patch recently. I'm also trying to draw more traffic to the blog - aren't we all - and I want to post more regularly to this blog.
Like the WhatsApp chat with my sisters, I'm gonna post the original and cover song from YouTube, and then write my commentary.
I'm going to attach the first commentary here to this introductory post.
I hope you find them enjoyable. Feel free to comment.
Here's Van Morrison and Them

Here's David Bowie from Pinups.

24 October 2022 Here Comes the Night: Them, feat; Van Morrison Cover: 

David Bowie

I love this song. Brilliant to listen to it again.  Only really knew the Bowie recording till today.

Lyrically such an interesting, intelligent and insightful lyric. I love the singer's self conscious, jealous and genuinely human response to seeing his ex-girlfriend with another boy.

I enjoy and dislike  elements of both recordings.

I love Bowie’s vocal. I always have issues with Morrison’s voice. But it’s rough and fragile perhaps it really works here.

I don’t like Bowie’s over use of the saxophone. Morrison’s band is tight as Bowie’s is.

I love the refrain/verse. ‘Here comes the night.’ I love the way it’s repeated so many times but totally unrelated to the main lyric.

I think the song is so upbeat. Contrasts strongly with the subject of the song. I don’t enjoy that aspect of the song.

Difficult to judge. The original recording has a default advantage over the cover, I think. The cover version has to surpass the original, often written by or closely associated with the performer. The cover has to own the song. Make it their own. It has to be more than just a copy of the original.
We have to be aware of the associations we bring to the song and separate ourselves from them.

But here Bowie isn't better than Them despite the better recording equipment and probably better instruments. Bowie isn't trying to do a better performance than the original. He's trying to pay a tribute to them. There's a rawness and an energy to the original, that the cover just doesn't possess. That may have something to do with its release date of 1965, when rock n roll was still quite young. By the time we come to Bowie's1973 cover, the music industry had quietened down, become more settled.

My vote goes to Them.