Reviews

Artist:David Carroll And Friends
Album: Bold Reynold
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 9
Website: https://www.boldreynold.co.uk/

A regular on the folk club scene in the 70s, a stringed instruments craftsman and an in-demand session player, this finally fulfils his ambition to record an album of traditional songs with new arrangements. To which end, as per the credit, he's recruited an assortment of friends, namely Dave Oberle, Graeme Taylor and Brian Gulland from Gryphon, Fairporters Dave Pegg and Chris Leslie, banjo player Tom Spencer from The Men They Couldn't Hang and singer Lucy Cooper, with instrumentation that variously takes in the likes of Appalachian dulcimer, crumhorn, cor Anglais, table, bassoon, uillean pipes and church organ.

However, it's not a traditional number that opens proceedings, rather a seven and a half minute working of Andy Barnes' anti-whaling ballad 'The Last Leviathan' and which fittingly opens with whale noises melding into the bassoons before the dulcimer kicks in, the arrangement and cascading chords imparting an anthemic feel to its modal melody. It's followed in more strident form with a working of the traditional Irish 'Follow Me Up To Carlow', a celebration of the defeat of an English army of 3000 in 1580, given a rollicking marching beat with fiddle, mandolin and pipes.

A second traditional follows with the rather more restrained melancholic seven minute 'Poor Murdered Woman', the tragic ballad of a body found on Leatherhead Common in 1834, having to lie there until the next day the discovery being late in the evening, Oberle lending his vocals while Carroll takes care of acoustic guitar and dulcimer, the lengthy instrumental break being 'The Bonnie Labouring Boy'. From here comes the only slightly shorter Napoleon-era ballad 'Banks Of The Nile', Copper taking on the vocals with a relatively stripped back accompaniment of fiddle, bouzouki, pipes and dancing drum that, with its courtly feel, is one of the most potently traditional sounding numbers.

Arguably the best-known (and another seven minute take) is 'She Moved Through The Fair', harmonium and pipes giving an Eastern-like drone quality as the voices of Carroll and Cooper overlap and harmonise, the instrumental coda switching nations for a variation on 'The Skye Boat Song'. The tempo then kicks up its heels for a jig through a 19th century version of piracy ballad 'High Barbaree' with bodhran, whistle, pipes, bassoon and fiddle and Cooper, Leslie, Oberle and Gulland providing the shanty chorus backing vocals. Though coming in at just under five minutes, Carroll's arrangement of 'Poor Man's Sorrow', otherwise known as 'I Was A Young Man', still plays out with all 15 verses as twin bassoons, fiddle, bouzouki and harmonium lend it an inexorable driving propulsion.

The second of the non-traditional numbers is another epic, a whisker short of eight minutes (and longer than the original), that turns to the Strawbs self-titled debut back in 1969 and 'The Battle', written by Dave Cousins inspired by the chess game in Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal' as an allegory of the American Civil Rights movement. Oberle's crumhorns provide a medieval setting intro to underscore the narrative setting before drums and guitar take up the baton as Carroll relates the bloody clash between the forces of the Bishops and the King. To be honest, I don't think Carroll's not particularly distinctive voice captures the same building drama in the way Cousin's reedy tones did, but even so it's a sterling effort.

It ends in jaunty, ale-swigging manner as chiming dulcimer and bouzouki set the scene for 'Gentlemen Of High Renown', a song he learnt from the repertoire of the Copper Family, that, the first verse sung unaccompanied, throws in pretty much the kitchen sink in terms of featured instruments as it relates the tale of the titular Bold Reynold giving the Oxfordshire hounds a run for their money before meeting his inevitable bloody fate as hunting horn blows and the track plays out in 5/4 time with The Foxhunter's Jig.

As I say, Carroll's isn't the strongest or most flexible voice in folk rock circles, but couched in the company of such seasoned players and with his own virtuoso musicianship, this is nevertheless a rather fine addition to the ranks.

Mike Davies

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