The Familiars
Album: Martyred Hearts
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 7
Website: http://thefamiliarsduo.wordpress.com

Norwich-based folk outfit The Familiars seems nominally to be a duo comprising Jo (Joanna) Swan (voice, recorder, glockenspiel, percussion) and Tom (Thomas) Conway (voice, acoustic guitar, percussion), but on this CD they're augmented by violinist Vincent Maltby, whose name gets equal-size billing on the credits, so that might well imply a more permanent trio configuration instead. Whatever, The Familiars' stock-in-trade is original songs (jointly penned by Joanna and Thomas) which draw fairly extensively on local history and legend. Musically, they most audibly derive their prime inspiration from approved acid-folk predecessors, owing much of their sparse and well-delineated soundscape to the likes of Principal Edwards Magic Theatre (especially), The Sun Also Rises and Pentangle, with perhaps a hint of Stone Angel. There's a definite (self-admitted) trace of Bert Jansch in Thomas Conway's virtuoso yet intelligently descriptive guitar playing, while simple embellishments from hand-drum, shaker and so on are both well-considered and highly effective, recalling the experiments of the ISB as much as Pentangle's Terry Cox; the violin swoops and swoons inventively around and across these basic textures.

Vocally, however, it might be argued that Joanna's singing presence has more in common with Carole Pegg (of Mr Fox) than Pentangle's Jacqui McShee or Mellow Candle's Alison O'Donnell - certainly on the evidence of the first couple of tracks, where her inherent spicy harshness of timbre makes for compelling, spellbinding and disturbing listening, at times almost too unrelenting for comfort in its sheer attack. The twitchy, twittery ornithological treatise that is Bridge Of Birds makes for a magical opening track, with glistening glockenspiel strokes punctuating the cautious guitar traceries like delicate bird footprints; while Joanna's emotional expressiveness used to an even fuller extent on the true story of The Shaming Of Agnes Leman, done credibly in authentic folk-ballad style. The even more extraordinary third song, however, 52Hz Whale, brings as extreme a contrast as you could imagine, with Joanna calling forth a hitherto-undreamt-of pure, ethereal, poised "head voice" to seriously spooky effect, backed by limpid, drifting guitar figures and occasional supplementary male vocal harmonies to convey the creature's unbearably sad predicament. Following which, the pendulum of contrast swings wildly back in completely the other direction to give us Everso Cross In Newquay, a rather silly tale (though with a point to make!) sporting a high-velocity patter lyric delivered in a quite curious manner that I can only describe as refined-pseudo-Jake-Thackray, to an equally high-energy Cossack-style knees-up backing. The central ballad Sons Of Clovis is an epic narrative set (I believe) in Saxon times, and receives a deliberate, precisely enunciated reading and dramatic instrumental accompaniment with a suitably journeying sense of momentum. The Raven And The Vole is another strong track, its tale's aura of scariness eerily matched by its intriguing and rewarding intricacy of interweaving male and female vocal parts and mystical-medieval instrumental scoring. Only on the closing (title) track (the story of a head-teacher's unfair dismissal which led to a lengthy trade union strike) does the male vocal sound a little mannered perhaps, notably when it takes a solo passage; even so, the combined effect of the two voices in retelling this touching tale is rather haunting.

All in all, The Familiars are aptly named, for they succeed in their avowed intention to recreate the spirit of "the familiar" (70s acid-folk) era in a delectably ghostly manner that's still slightly challenging, while personal and distinctive in imparting their own voice to the genre. If I didn't know otherwise, I could easily believe that Martyred Hearts was a newly-exhumed early-70s psych-folk neglected-classic. I'm so looking forward to hearing more from this band, and soon.

David Kidman