Stuart Forester
Album: A Yard Of Ale
Label: Melonstone
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.stuartforester.com

This disc (Stuart's second release, the followup to 2010 debut Pennies From Gold) was a welcome surprise, and it turns out a thoroughly recommendable one too.

It does Stuart no justice to describe him as just a singer-songwriter; his passion for telling stories in song is an obsessive one, and one which it sounds for all the world as though he was born with, for so abundantly strong is the sense of total absorption with which he carries out this activity. His songs employ traditional folk stylings to recount trials and triumphs taken from real life and chronicle the reactions to a period of personal struggle for their protagonists. He sings with what I can only describe as a heartfelt affection and an extreme, and very appealing, directness of purpose and expression, and accompanies himself with attractively accomplished but refreshingly unshowy guitar fingerpicking, also employing some respectably sparing additional musical colourings from guest musicians Jack Burnaby and Phil Martin (variously on harmonium, melodeon, fiddle and viola) on around half of the album's dozen tracks.

It could be said that Stuart's accent (noticeably Hull-ish, which is where his family eventually settled after a long-term nomadic existence) betrays hints of Martin Simpson (well, Scunthorpe's not a million miles away after all), and a further measure of the influence of that very performer is also evoked on the general feel of The Roving Labourer (which cheekily also references The Dalesman's Litany along its way, incidentally). Then again, the upbeat gait of the praise-of-country-traditions song Bramblefoot rather calls to mind Pete Morton and Urban Folk. But in truth Stuart doesn't really sound like anyone else, although in the sheer passion and forthright delivery style of his performance I was reminded generally of born-again-traditionalist J.P. Slidewell.

And given the intensely voiced and crafted nature of his songs and performance, it may be hard to accept that Stuart has a musical background in the worlds of rock'n'roll and electronic music. A Yard Of Ale is the product of a recent re-energising of Stuart's traditional sensibilities and empathy with acoustic music, but he also shows a real gift for melody and song construction - many of his creations sport decidedly catchy refrains or choruses as well as genuinely memorable folk-inflected tunes. His reinterpretation of the traditional Factory Girl dovetails extremely well with his own compositions therefore, as does the disc's other non-original, an honest (if perhaps slightly briskly phrased) cover of Mike Waterson's compelling Cold Coast Of Iceland. Finally, Stuart demonstrates his proficiency on Appalachian dulcimer on the brief instrumental interlude Gitonyossie.

This is an exceptional release, one of quite formidable character.

David Kidman