English exquisita from East Anglia, ornamental and elegant, Honey and the Bear are sounding ever more like a joy.
THAT ONE’S HONEY…..
Yeah, I know, which one’s Honey? I’m guessing Lucy and Jon Hart, said duo, have heard that one and possibly a few times. But don’t let a name come between you and their amalgam of roots based music, drawn equally from inspirational wells of both Anglo and Appalachian origins. As a duo, voices, guitars, banjo and bouzouki, they excel, without forgetting the big old bass they swap between them, yet, such the quality of their accompanists, they become a veritable smorgasbord of current cutting edge. So, as with earlier outings and, for that matter, live, here they are joined by regulars, Toby Shaer, Evan Carson and Archie Churchill-Moss. You gotta be good to attract such class and here’s the evidence.
A JUMP TO EXHILARATING
Close To The Edge, which opens the disc, has enough sprightliness of step as an unadorned melody to more than pass muster, just with the duo’s joy laden harmony vocal. But factor in all the finesse of Shaer, Moss and Carson and it jumps into exhilarating. Indeed, those eagle of ear will also spot the cello of Graham Coe, a further member of Sam Kelly’s Lost Boys, rounding out the existing veritable folk orchestra. A song about the Suffolk Merman, the Green Man of Orford, it positively bounds along, Shaer’s flute to the fore, rippling banjo and Carson’s reliable patter keeping all to speed.
Place Like My Home is a gentler piece, a thoughtful meander that captures more maritime. Languid fiddle, again from Shaer, tugs at the emotions, the gentle squeeze of Moss’s melodeon a further mournful backdrop. But it is the vocals, again, that carry the most heft, the combination as well designed for integration as salt and caramel. Break From The Chain has a bluesier bent around the guitar construct, the sung melody a complex twist and turn, the acoustic blues of the American south rather than anything more abrasive from Chicago. Coe’s cello provides a dense filling to the whole, and, too, it is revealed as a paean to the briny. Shaer adds yet more winsome fiddle flourishes, it little wonder how sought after a sideman he has become.
DELICATE STRENGTH
So far the vocals have all been joint, it not until Where Do You Go that we first get taste of Lucy’s delicate individual strength, if only as the song opens. Silk may be soft but is nothing but enduring. This is another swaying waltz of reflection that ebbs and flows under Carson’s deft metronome.
I realise comment has yet to be made around the near unobtrusive pendulum of double bass, anchoring this and every song, whomsoever of the couple are in charge at any particular time. That same wistful feel seeps into a song about the Northern Lights, What’s Left For Wishing, and around wanting to see them with the one you love. (Mind you, with the amount of fossils we continue to fire up, it seems they are becoming an aspiration all the easier to catch……) The robust cello imbues the sense of a marching band to the coda of this song, both unexpectedly and enticingly.
CONTRAST
Cruel Mistress offers quite the contrast, stripped back to glorious bass and Lucy, now completely alone, with only the promise of an ominous background drone simmering slowly behind. The spirit of Alexandra Elene Denny is very much alive and channelling in through this one, and the shivers induced are deliciously prickly. It is hard to ignore, rising up through any distractions you may have unwittingly embraced. Piggy backing on that mood, Rush In is a strummed swagger that spotlights her voice that little bit more, ahead Jon remembering to remind us how strong are his harmonies. The simplest song here, it is almost amongst the most instant, if forever tipping your tongue around possible tunes adjacent. The most “americana” song here, it has a a rich smack of hillbilly campfire about it, Shaer’s whistle a distant memory of a land far away. Quietly and surreptitiously, this album is nailing it!
FOLKY PURE POP POLISH
Company is then an edgy shatter of disarming underlying threat, an uneasy tone poem around social media. The drums offset the cello and violin which engage from opposing slants. Rather than Lucy and Jon, it seems multiple Lucys that bear the due warning. More uplifting content comes with The Air That We Breathe, a song around planting trees, something the couple have done a lot of, since planting, um, their own, and becoming parents. No more like the closely adjacently named Hollies song than the opener is like the Yes song, it has a chuggy melodeon riff that breaks in to buttress the otherwise pure pop polish they apply to their tune.
Everything begins with some languorous mandolin tinkle, and a loping bass, slow melodeon chords imbuing the song with a lost Laurel Canyon moment. Evocative of the best of what the Americans call folk and we might call country, it is terrific song this late in the running order. Or at any time, really. it’s called Everything Will Be OK, and you feel that it will. From assurance to expectation, Be Still is a song for healing after loss, of understanding and reasoned aspiration. Lucy sings to her own picked guitar, with sonorous cello looming lingeringly. A perfect closing track to end with, seeding hope and acceptance, in a world and for a world seeming without.
ENGLISH EXQUISITA
This fourth album is a delight. Arriving on St. George’s day, it is as English as can be, yet without any of the trappings that notion has come to represent. Songs, sung serenely, with a pulse and a conscience, played with perfect pitch and precision. Lucy and Jon Hart can be and should be proud of this, with Jon’s production managing to contain all the manifold beauty of the always and innately more than competent orchestration. The tour, already started, looks a belter too. If not before, ATB will be catching them all at Folk East.
Here’s that opening track, Close To The Edge:
Honey & The Bear: Website