David Carroll reprises his time walk through medieval prog/folk-rock mash; yet another bumper crop of vintage frolics.

Release Date: 12th July 2024

Label: Talking Elephant

Format: CD / Vinyl / Digital

David Carroll is not short of friends. The chances are that the name means nothing, unless of course you are familiar with this album’s predecessor, Bold Reynold, which came out last year. Alternatively, he may have made or repaired instruments for you, his area of expertise, and the likely where and how his impressive roster of sidesmen came from. Impressive roster? Well, there’s a brace of Fairporters, various Gryphon-eers and Tom Spencer of The Men They Couldn’t Hang. (Lest he seem an outlier, context shows him the son of the late John B. Spencer, a once celebrated singer-songwriter who brushed genres with some of the others featured here.)

Unsurprisingly, given those friends, reprised from the first album, the sound is much as you might expect, traditional, as in 20th century, folk-rock, along with a mediaeval brass section: crumhorns, recorders and bassoons, Carroll’s voice is little more than a robust conduit for the vocals; no great shock in itself, authenticity always deemed more important than virtuosity in this style of music. Opener, The Battle Of Sowerby Bridge, thus leaps out on a chunky electric guitar pattern, ahead Carroll recounting the tale. Despite the odd descriptiveness, or perhaps because, this is a traditional song, a performed by acapella masters, Swan Arcade. But, with Brian Gulland, the wild haired Gryphon man, credited on eight woodwinds of one form or another, including swanee whistle, it is anything but unaccompanied. His Gryphon bandmates, Dave Oberlé and Graeme Taylor are on hand for percussion duties and guitar, the band here rounded out by Dave Pegg on bass. Among the backing vocalists is included fellow Fairport multi-instrumentalist, Chris Leslie. It gradually builds the rampart of sound, and it a good introduction. Dated as hell, but that is the whole point.

Oberlé picks up lead vocal for Gweebarra Shore, and a change of mood. An Irish song of emigration from Kevin, brother of Maggie, Boyle, it dials down the rock, for a lilting melody with uillean pipes, mandolins and fiddle. The pipes come from Carroll, as does the mandolin, the fiddle from Leslie. Taylor adds some atmospheric widescreen guitar, with Peggy burbling away inimitably, in the lower registers. Down Among The Dead Men is a more frivolous/macabre song, depending on your stance. A song from 1728, the collective imbue it with a good-natured cod-Elizabethan vibe, the choral refrain of the title especially lingering, whilst Gulland tootles all his recorders and bassoons. Taylor rips off the sort of solo his stint in the Albion Band was reknowned for, it all proving to be a slight song, lifted into far finer territory by the arrangement.

Lucy Taylor also returns to this record, giving her vocal charm to Johnny Jump Up, a(nother) drinking song, about the perils of drinking cider “matured” in whiskey barrels. Swaying like the devotees of said tipple, the song continues the sense of enjoyment this project sounds to have been in the making. If you are a devotee of the heyday of electric folk songs, you are going to love this second chapter. With lyrics like “Oh never, oh never, oh never again, if I live to a hundred or a hundred and ten“, you know exactly what to expect. Sheaf And Knife, with an electric dulcimer to the fore, Carroll again, has you now so drawn in as to be appreciating and admiring, as he pipes in, his raw vocal, the song subject to a the sort of folk-rock build that is hoped for, the bass and drums kicking in, on fire, after the first verse. Taylor’s guitar locks horns with Leslie’s fiddle, with Gulland’s bassoon the ever vigilant ringmaster. Another terrific Taylor solo carries the whole song to another level.

A Little Of One With T’Other goes all Elizabethan again, with Carroll’s lute dallying with Gulland, now on harpsichord. As the recorder chorus peals in, it is as close to Gryphon as anything here, if becoming a little heavier, courtesy the electrical storm at the finale. The Irish connection re-appears, with pipes, for a second song of emigration, confirming the quartet of themes here as fighting, drinking, lusting and, then, in one way or another, leaving. Slieve Gallion Ways shows Carroll is no mean piper, either, as the brief intro displays, before it becomes the yearning ballad that any song that mentions “one morning in May” should.

A Week Before Easter retains a similar sense of wry reminiscence, a variant of the False Bride, that wrings out all the emotion, through pipe organ and, initially, acoustic guitars and fiddle, a bassoon solo forcing out every last tear, before pipes squeeze out another few. McShane, as the name suggests, stays on the same side of the Irish sea. This is where Spencer makes his appearance, playing a 5 string banjo. the whole reminiscent, in style, of the JSD Band or Spud. The mix of rhythm section with whistles and pipes is curiously nostalgic, not least as it breaks into a unison jig, with Pegg doing what he does best, keeping it altogether, tightly and melodically. As the woodwinds come in, it could be an outtake from The Compleat Dancing Master.

Having enjoyed this album all the way, so far, it seems churlish now to diss the closer, Pace Egging Song, which, rather than describing some arcane egg-eating marathon, refers to egg decorating at Easter, in Lancashire. This takes the form of an aural play, with different characters voiced by different singers. Diss is too strong a word, as I didn’t actively dislike it, finding it more the vanity now stretched too thin. Maybe it is just too similar of Wassail Song, as by the Albion (Dance) Band, but with weaker vocals. Hardly surprising, the electric folk with historical woodwindery was much their 70s through ’80s M.O. It’s OK, musically, but I guess I just don’t like am-dram singing.

Those with the digital or CD versions get a couple of additional tricks, The Keach In The Creel and Adieu, Sweet Nancy. Sadly, the former is cut from a similar cloth as Pace Egging Song, and, despite being constructed far more favourably, the shadow of the earlier song casts a long shadow. A different sequencing might have avoided it, as there is a superb instrumental coda that completes it, in the same sort of territory as McShane, pipes, banjo and fiddle all well pegged in, see what I did there, by bass and drums. Nancy gets the full unaccompanied, Cooper and Carroll taking the lead, but showing both their, and the ensemble vocals, to have a greater heft than might be anticipated. Very good, actually, and sufficient to allow dampening of the feel this album has shown a soggy bottom. Snatched, as they say!

I am uncertain who the audience at whom this album is aimed, or at least whether that demographic would include anyone much under sixty. Having said, aren’t there enough ageing hippies out there to relish just this sort of delight? Folk festival audiences suggest that is still so, and the band, were they ever able to be brought together on one stage, well, that would be an enticing proposition.

Not on this album, but as good a taster of what to expect as any, Poot Man’s Sorrow, from the first album.

David Carroll & Friends: Website

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