 | | Reviews | | |  THE GREEN HOUSE BAND
Mirage
Market Square Music MSMCD126
Take three (girls? no, sorry ...) hoary folk-rockers, a theatrical arranger and a young actress and you have The Green House Band, self-confessed lovers of traditional song and its 1960s and '70s stylings. Cast: Graeme Taylor (Gryphon, Albion Band, Home Service), Dave Berry (John Kirkpatrick Band, hKippers), Michael Gregory (cult prog-folkers Fuschia, Albion Band, Home Service, John B Spencer Band, hKippers) and Neil McArthur (Harvey And The Wallbangers, long list of West End/Broadway composition credits).
Add vocalist Madeleine Worrall (RSC, Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders) and a sizeable chunk of the back catalogue of John Renbourn and Bert Jansch and you have a debut album that sounds like Pentangle meets Trees in a West End production of The Wicker Man.
McArthur taught himself to play guitar after hearing Renbourn on the radio, and a clear infatuation with the classic British acoustic era is all over this record. Bert & John classics (Reynadine (sic), Rosemary Lane, Blackwater Side, The Drifter) run alongside folk standards (Geordie, Flash Company, The Snows (featuring the late Tim Rose), Archie Fisher's Lindsay, Joan Baez's Annabel Lee and Three Fishers) and an 8-minute 'trad. arr. Renbourn' instrumental medley complete with thrutchy guitar and Jacqui McShee-like scat singing. Unfortunately, you can put the singer into the actress but apparently you can't take the actress out of the singer: Worrall's classically-trained, school-marmish vocals dominate this well-played if reverential nostalgia-fest, though her strong, clear voice works well enough on the bluesy, brooding Jansch title track.
Market Square's promo blurb calls Mirage "an unusual essay in pastoral English folk", and it's not wrong. A labour of love, a celebration of a genre? Surely. An essential addition to your record collection? 'Fraid not.
Mel McClellan - March 2004
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Folk & Acoustic
