The Full English
Album: The Full English
Label: Topic
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.efdss.org/efdss-the-full-english

The Full English is a groundbreaking digital archive project of awesome scope. Sponsored by the EFDSS, the resource of that name represents several key strands of folk heritage including traditional dances, tunes and customs, also drawing together for the first time a host of folksongs noted down by ten of the most notable collectors of the early 20th century including Grainger, Sharp, Broadwood, Kidson and Vaughan Williams. The renowned latter-day scholar and singer Fay Hield was an ideal choice to be commissioned to present a modest selection of music from the archive, for which purpose she assembled and fronted a band comprising six of the most formidable and charismatic talents on the present-day folk scene: Nancy Kerr, Martin Simpson, Seth Lakeman, Ben Nicholls, and Rob Harbron and Sam Sweeney (two of her own Hurricane Party colleagues).

This disc, the studio album resulting from Fay's endeavours, was released recently, at the outset of a rather brief Arts-Council-supported stage tour delivering a full evening of material drawn from the archive. It contains ten songs and two instrumental treatments, all of which take the source material and ingeniously reshape it into fresh and vital living performances that genuinely throw new light on the songs. The disc kicks off in style with the sterling a cappella anthem Awake Awake, in a well-harmonised version which, though stemming basically from that collected by Sharp, is built from divergent texts and furnished with a tune of Fay's own devising. This approach is typical of the treatments accorded to the source material, although no individual song could be said to be entirely unrecognisably transformed from its source; furthermore, at least two of them (The Servant Man and The Man In The Moon) don't even have a tune provided in the original collections. The strong sense of commitment running through the performances is matched by the level of inspiration.

Highlights include the bouncy setting of The Man In The Moon, where the chance was eagerly taken to supply an audience-friendly chorus to suit its sentiment; an unexpectedly vigorous take on Rounding The Horn where Ben takes the lead vocal role; Nancy's own canny creation Fol The Day-O, whose title mischievously mirrors the refrain of Creeping Jane - a vivacious rendition of which is led by the unmistakable voice of Martin Simpson, who later proceeds to turn in a beautiful guitar-and-fiddle-driven meditation on Brigg Fair that arises most naturally out of (and retreats back into) a sample of Joseph Taylor's celebrated wax cylinder recording, Fay and Nancy take breathless turns to voice the irresistible lilting, tripping jiggery on the fun narrative of Arthur O'Bradley. Seth Lakeman treats us to a contrasted pair of contributions: the stirring, brooding battle account Stand By Your Guns and the emotive Kidson discovery Portrait Of My Wife. The paced, reflective morris gait of William And Nancy is supremely elegant; but the overall prize for elegance must go to the disc's closing selection, Linden Lea, where Fay, to a gorgeous string backdrop, turns in a lovely performance, for all that she betrays the influence of her mentor Maggie Boyle in her shaping and decorating of the melody line.

This all amounts to a fine collection, well presented and packaged with an attractive and fulsome booklet sporting full lyrics and plenty of supporting information; moreover, apposite photographic portraits from both eras of activity are represented. There is however, and notwithstanding the high standard of the performances within, a slight residual niggle in that the release (unavoidably) bears a certain whiff of a "sampler-cum-tie-in" rather than a fully-fledged and more consciously "worked-in" venture. As a concomitant, The Full English doesn't quite have the unity one might expect even from an album-of-the-show memento, simply because the very distinctive performing styles of the various participants (for all that they work well together) make it at times feel more like a tribute album than a cohesive group project (although no individual track can in any way be regarded a failure). Whatever, The Full English deserves to sell well, and this disc is bound to prompt eager demand for a second volume.

David Kidman