Is it too soon to call her our grande dame? Searing solo vocal gauntlet duly laid down, have we a better interpreter today?

Release Date: 12th April 2024

Label: Self released

Format: Digital (Bandcamp)

Well, this was a surprise! Coming with no great warning, give or take a few mysterious tweets (or muskies, as they are now known), suddenly here it is. Now, whether you think it right that this stalwart of the English tradition should have to release her product in this way, with nary a record label or hard copy in sight, well, that’s another story. With her last release being the similarly unannounced Eliza Carthy Trio ‘Conversations We’ve Had Before’, slipping out last July so swiftly as to evade our well-oiled review machinery, this can’t be allowed to happen again. This time she is without Saul Rose and David Delarre, and is near without nowt than her now nicely seasoned vocal; fiddle appears on but a couple of the eight songs. So unaccompanied, then? I should cocoa.

Is this a short LP or a long EP is a question to vex others, but I don’t care, bring it on. and she does, with I Wish, I Wish, walloping in from the start. A traditional song, from the repertoire of the same Cecilia Costello so recently raved about by Tradfolk in their excellent article about Birmingham. Carthy captures, convincingly, the yearning of the lyric, an older woman harking back to a more fecund youth. In truth, I hope she actually is preferring her maturity, her voice now a rich vessel or character and charisma. Here’s A Sad Goodbye follows, and is the first song with instrumentation, her fiddle an unreconstructed and effective beast. A tune, traditional again, that almost writes itself, the balance between wood and flesh is a stark reminder that she is a mistress of both.

New York Trader has had a recent renewed lease of life of life via Lankum, their version full of well constructed foreboding. By stripping it right back, much even more than on her own earlier outing, with the Imagined Village, the gaunt chill of the lyric, and her delivery devoid of conscience, gives a stark portrait of sociopathy. Oo-ee-oo. She also has form for The Trees They Do Grow High, covered way back when she was a duo with Nancy Kerr. Once more, it is experience that shines through this revisit, the song arguably wasted on youth. This is an oft covered song, in a number of varied versions; I challenge the others to be as world-weary and love-lorn as this.

The release comes with a short set of notes about each tune, each song, a paragraph apiece. These both set the scene and give a little of her personal history with each of them. Inevitability, her parents get drawn into several of these vignettes, as with Pulling Hard Against The Stream, where the tune is learnt from her mother. This is the song in which that legacy hits hardest, her voice carrying undeniable (and unsurprising) similarity to her mothers. A little lighter, maybe, in tone, but clearly Norma Waterson’s kith and kin. Proudly and rightly so. May Morning adds further to that legacy, she having performed it with both of her parents, for one of the Waterson: Carthy albums. The fiddle is out, once more, but this is a rougher, tougher rendition, raw and relentless. Tremendous, actually, ragged in tooth and claw. Hey, nonny not, and essential listening.

In a diversion from trad.arr., it is the Richard Thompson songbook that then gets plundered, reprising her RT 70th Birthday bash performance of The Great Valerio. Outbleaking even the original, her vocal takes in all the chill of Linda Thompson, but inserts a gaunt wretchedness there not apparent. If told this were a newly discovered tinfoil cylinder recording from the turn of the last century, OK, cleaned up of the pops and scratches, it might have you considering that possibility. It would take something to beat that, but, astonishingly, she nearly does. Her register as low as anywhere here, she imbues The Grey Cock with a stop everything rendition that eclipses any of her prior assays on this traditional song, even the somewhat wonderful cross-cultural Grey Gallito she gave with Salsa Celtica.

It isn’t often a review results from a personal purchase, unsullied by any PR hyperbole. But this digital only release cries out to be heard and to be heard wider. Give this woman a recording contract, someone, assuming she even wants one, as the absence of hard copy leaves a gap many might wish to fill.

Of course there aren’t any videos specially made for this cottage release, co-produced, along with Carthy, and mixed by Ben Seal, but her Great Valerio from the Royal Albert Hall might tickle up an inquisitive ear.

Eliza Carthy online: Website / Facebook / X (formerly known as Twitter) / Instagram

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