Reviews

Artist:Ciderhouse Rebellion (with Molly Donnery/Jessie Summerhayes)
Album: A Little Bit Slanted/ And Even The Sheep Shall Dance/ Tales Of Colonsay
Label: Under The Eaves
Tracks: 10/9/11
Website: https://www.theciderhouserebellion.com

An ambitious (if potentially sales divisive) folk triptych by the improvisational duo of fiddler Adam Summerhayes and accordionist Murray Grainger, this combines three separate albums (one a double) released simultaneously, with accompanying books, and taking different musical approaches.

The first, a collaboration with Irish folkie Molly Donnery (as in Cider With Molly) from The Haar, is a collection of songs from her childhood, sung in both Gaelic and English and accompanied by the spontaneous arrangements. First up is the five-minute slow air 'My Buachaillínn Donn' ('My Brown-haired Boy'), first written down in 1903 and one of the first she learnt and with which she won the All Ireland Scór Na nÓg, here sung in English.It's followed by the jauntier 'An Spealadóir', sung in Gaelic, the title translating as scythe and being about grasscutting, though it may well have a more euphemistic meaning.

Sounding as though designed to be accompanied by cider swigging in summer fields, Jimmy Murphy' likely has its origins in the 1798 rebellion in Wexford and features a word tumbling chorus that challenges singers to complete in a single breath. Again English with a mid-tempo stomping rhythm, 'The Kilmacthomas Girl' was written by John Barry from Caheruain,Kill, Co Waterford on meeting his future wife. The longest at over seven minutes, 'The Cabin with the Roses 'Round The Door' is sung virtually a cappella with just sparse, muted accompaniment before breaking out into a spritely jig finale, followed by the reflective melancholic, wistful 'Where the Mulcair River Flows'. Sung at her first ever All-Ireland competition, opening unaccompanied, 'Murphy's Running Dog' is credited to Michael O'Brien from Wexford and, as it suggests, is about a racing dog, a lurcher if the tune's any indication, this time Donnery not forgetting the lyrics to the last verse.

Again in English, the emigration-themed lament 'A Stór Mo Chroí' ('Treasure Of My Heart') was written by Brian O'Higgins while the penultimate 'My Father's Cabin Small' is a celebration of the nature of the homes in rural Irish culture where the door is always open to anyone passing. It ends with the fiddle rousing stomper 'The Town Of Ballybay', a nonsense song ("she had a wooden leg that was hollow down the middle/She used to tie a string on it and play it like a fiddle") with a ring-a-ding-a-dong chorus made famous by Tommy Makem and The Clancy Brothers, the trio giving it some fulsome zest. The book includes lyrics and oil paintings by Summerhayes.

The second CD is the wholly instrumental And Even The Sheep Shall Dance, featuring just the duo but expanding their instrumentation to include a stomp box. Recorded in just 24 hours, over two days in the spring of 2023, it's their response to the post-COVID current state of the world with all its turmoil and anxieties, the title coming from the invented biblical quote "As the apocalypse comes, and the end times are upon us, cider should be drunk and even the sheep shall dance". As such, it's a lively and danceable collection of tunes with titles such as 'And The Last Pineapple Goes', 'Until The Rabbit Warriors Dance'. 'To Storm The Cucumber Castle' (surely an oblique Bee Gees reference) and 'And We Shall Float Like Sheep', moments of calm such as 'Whilst Islands Shrink' counterbalancing the more dynamic tracks. It comes with a graphic novel, illustrated by Summerhayes in a Quentin Blake-esque style, telling a story about sheep, warring rabbits and the impending apocalypse.

The third CD and the third collaboration with Summerhayes' award-winning poet and spoken-word artist daughter Jessie has a very specific landscape, written for her father's birthday and inspired by a particular journey to and on the Inner Hebridean island of Colonsay, charting her movements from Oban, across the sea and along the island's Atlantic shoreline and culminating at Hangman's Rock. The words and the music recorded in three separate rooms, it opens with the instrumental verve of 'Arrival To A Grey Day', Jessie making her first appearance on the wistful 'Two Twisted Birches And The Body', the poem setting a tone that is both observational and interpretative, embracing thoughts of childhood wonder, decay and death, jealousy and nature's rebellion against human indifference and cruelty. They range from over nine minutes to just 102 seconds and should be listened to as a whole rather than in isolation, the second disc being the full-on 26-minute, breathlessly spoken, musically pulsing, epic tragic, murderous tale of 'Hangman's Rock' itself, the accompanying book featuring Jessie's poems and illustrations.

One of the most individual, innovative and idiosyncratic forces in contemporary-traditional folk, any one of the three would be a worthy addition to your collection, all three would seem essential.

Mike Davies

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