Coope, Boyes & Simpson
Album: In Flanders Fields
Label: No Masters
Tracks: 50
Website: http://www.nomasters.co.uk

This release is self-recommending to all who care about peace and espouse humanitarian values - for it presents, over a span of close on 2½ hours, a colourful, if grimly realistic parade of song giving an overview of this celebrated a cappella trio's work on the subject of World War 1 in Flanders and beyond. CB&S have over the past two decades been involved in a number of projects on the theme, including several Peace Concerts performed at various relevant locations such as former battlefield sites.

Inevitably, then, some of the material on these two discs is culled from existing recordings of earlier projects, but equally, plenty is newly recorded, including several items that to my surprise the trio hadn't previously committed to disc. The whole emotional gamut is represented, from soldiers' songs like The Sergeant-Major's Having A Time, When This Blasted War Is Over, Goodbye Dolly Gray, Fred Karno's Army and Hanging On The Old Barbed Wire (a splendidly expanded version!) to the sentimental standard Roses Of Picardy; from throwaway ditties like Tickler's Jam and music-hall numbers like Do Want Us To Lose The War? and Lloyd George's Beer through to well-loved classics like Only Remembered and There's A Long, Long Trail and altogether deeper, more thoughtful and often (necessarily) depressing fare like Down Upon The Dugout Floor and Standing In Line. The latter category delivers some of the finest tracks, with the cream of the crop being the own-compositions by trio members which provide uniquely perceptive and passionate commentaries on the situation and its implications.

I could single out so many of these for special praise, but Lester Simpson's The Rhyme Of No-Man's Land, An Tea Roa, Fault Lines and Marchlands, and Jim Boyes' Still In The Night, Hill 60, Spring 1919 and Chorus Line all deserve a mention if only to point up the sheer quality of the writing.

There's also a few John Tams compositions - Carol For Carmen (from War Horse), Can You Spare A Poppy? and his famed reworking of Lay Me Low; while June Tabor makes an appearance on Shule Agra (taken from the Seeds Of Peace production). The core trio's performances, of whatever genre of song, are absolutely matchless, and the harmony work exemplary - although, as ever with CB&S records, it can sometimes take a while for individual songs to "sink in", partly due to the complexity of the arrangements (it never ceases to amaze me how much these guys can do with just three well-matched voices!) and partly due to the thought-provoking nature of the lyrics.

Even the "light relief" numbers have a weight and texture that aid in giving the whole set a commanding (and almost blinding) unity of purpose and execution. Some numbers have a modicum of instrumental accompaniment - a piano here and there, or members of the ensemble Panta Rhei - and there are times when I feel this dilutes the power of the singing and the song itself (Jim's song Flanders being a case in point for me). But this is a small matter when the entire loving assemblage of songs and music is carried out so magnificently. Lest we forget, indeed.

David Kidman