 | | Reviews | | |  WATERSON:CARTHY
Fishes And Fine Yellow Sand
Topic Records TSCD542
Our competition to win copies of the album is now closed.
You don't half get good value with this team: two MBEs, three multi-BBC Folk Awards winners, a double Mercury Prize nominee and an erstwhile BBC Young Folk Award winner - all rolled into four performers fair bursting with the talent such gongs were invented to honour. And, as standard, you also get impeccably-researched songs of diverse and fascinating provenance, tunes rendered with immense skill and panache, four distinctive voices and a deeply satisfying sense of Englishness.
It might be expected that Martin and Eliza Carthy and Norma Waterson work well together but it's a tribute to Tim Van Eyken's talents that he fits the family formula like a glove. His expert vocal interplay with Carthy's characteristically sparse, syncopated guitar on Napoleon's Death is no mean feat and his bright, nimble melodeon style perfectly complements Eliza's masterful fiddling in the three sets of infectious dance tunes which interlard this otherwise dark and dastardly collection of tales. This fifth W:C album is a musical repository of Big Bad, containing songs of scallywags, victims, tragedies and terminal regret, and set in "the land where baddies rule", according to the articulate Mr Carthy's sleeve notes. Sole exception to this rule is the catchy opener, Goodbye Fare You Well, with its chorus of singing fishes but the tone's soon set by the gory Oxford Girl, who's murdered rather than married by her commitment-shy boyfriend.
The atmosphere's far from sombre though; more narrative-drama than goth-horror, with bags of musical light and shade. Further treats include a gorgeous version of Farewell Lovely Nancy (vocal/guitar by MC, plangent viola from guest Ben Ivitsky) and the hypnotic nine-minute Captain Kidd. A rolling, uptempo rendition of Jerry Garcia's beautiful Black Muddy River works - dare I say - even better than Norma's 1996 'solo' version with Richard Thompson on guitar.
Mel McClellan - June 2004
See also:
More Martin Carthy in our review of Brass Monkey's Flame Of Fire.
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Folk & Acoustic
