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The Wildlife Album
Market Square MSMCD134
Although he may not have been talking specifically about penguins, philosopher and politican Edmund Burke once opined that for evil to triumph all that was necessary was for good men to do nothing. Step forward Northern Ireland's noted folk critic Colin Harper who - with conservational relish and single-handed charitable zeal - has not only charmed noted names from the folk world into rendering their services for the cause of biodiversity but also seems to have written some of the songs, twiddled some production knobs, played the glockenspiel and quite possibly plied all participating compadres with copious mugs of hot herbal infusion.
With proceeds split between the Ulster Wildlife Trust and the WWF The Wildlife Album is a kind of Band Aid for badgers (and pandas - Martyn Joseph puts a tune to Stewart Henderson's playful poem about China's generously-rumped but precipitiously endangered bamboo munchers) with the likes of Gordon Giltrap (a pretty instrumental rendition of George Harrison's Here Comes The Sun) and Colin Reid (a similarly delicate take on Satie's most famous Gymnopodie) mixing it with Roy Harper's pernicously crackers performance of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky, some Cranberries-flavoured pop (Helen McGurk), some aptly sombre classical interludes and - oh yeah - Bert Jansch nailing the nature theme squarely on the head with a song called Blues For A Green World (one of Colin's, of course).
Seeing as twelve of the eighteen numbers were either commissioned or specially recorded for this project and are therefore unavailable elsewhere, The Wildlife Album offers a good return for devotees seeking their heroes enjoying a busman's holiday and - despite its disparate strands - works exceptionally well as an item of folk potpourri. And - to squeeze just a little more juice out of the old benefaction cliché - it's all for a good cause, really it is.
Kevin Maidment - March 2003
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Folk & Acoustic
