Genre: Folk
Places I remember: Real Groovy Records (Auckland)
Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: The Scarecrow (is scary man!)
Gear costume: Winifer Odd
Active compensatory factors: Slight detour here because this album came up for discussion in the MNAC (Monday night album club) I contribute to with some family in the UK.
Unusually, I already owned a copy so in the interests of killing two birds with one stone...
Actually death, killing and foreboding filthy weather are heavily represented as themes in the song lyrics of the album: The Scarecrow (an old man hanging from a pole); Never The Same (Rosemary's sitting in a shower of rain and it'll kill her); Fine Horsemen (my family's dead my heart is in the ground); Winifer Odd (she waited for death to come); Child Among The Weeds; and Danny Rose dies dramatically in his automobile.
Balancing this is the sunshine that creeps through at various times on Shady Lady, Bright Phoebus, Red Wine Promises, and Fine Horsemen.
Oh and, yes, ha, birds are in plentiful supply as well - raven wings, starlings, crows, sparrows, turtle doves.
The album isn't without humour thanks to opener The Rubber Band but from then on it's of the creepy macabre black kind (the end of Winifer Odd for instance with the ambulance arriving).
Apologies for coming over all English teacher like, but I love the lyrics to the album - they often feel like very old folk songs (The Scarecrow, Winifer Odd) and they often contain some deceptively sharp turn of phrase - Winifer Odd was born on one cold May morning in June.
Instrumentally the album is stunning - but with folk royalty all aboard, it would be wouldn't it: Martin Carthy; Richard Thompson; various Steeleye Spanites - Maddy Prior/ Tim Hart/ Ashley Hutchings join in the fun.
But the real stars here are Lal and Mike's songs and vocals - real, earthy, rural, unrepentently provincial. There's substance and honesty in this singing that is rare in this day and age.
Where do they all belong? It's a stand alone, yet deeply entrenched in the folk tradition.
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