Alison Frosdick & Jack Burnaby
Album: Half Hands Round
Label: Fuiseog
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.alisonandjack.co.uk

I came to this CD at the end of a long and frustrating day, not expecting much, but it really lifted me and I'll own up at once to being very agreeably taken with it - in fact, it's one of the most enjoyable and worthwhile releases I've been tasked with reviewing this quarter. What we get is a genuinely interesting collection of songs, in performances that can be described as no-nonsense, gimmick-free and attractively arranged, finely sung with understanding and feeling by Alison (what a superb voice - and what a discovery!) and sensitively and intelligently accompanied on an array of instruments (i.e. sundry boxes and occasional piano keyboard by Jack, and whistles by Alison herself - and whoopee, no guitars!).

Alison hails from Somerset, Jack from Hampshire; they met in a (mixed!) morris side, and since the release of their EP When Fishes Fly in 2011 they've been building a healthy reputation in London and the south-east, but this is the first I've heard of them and on this evidence I'd be keen to see them venturing further afield into more northerly territories.

Seven of the CD's twelve tracks are traditional in origin - capably arranged by Alison and Jack while for the most part scrupulously crediting their sources where known - while the tale of Alexander Pearce appears to have been created by Jack from a traditional ballad source but with its opening lines and most of the tune borrowed from a Muckram Wakes track (Gilliver).

Of the remaining tracks, one (Man About The House) emanates from the music-hall, two self-penned compositions (Ruardean Bears and Little Tommy Jones) are based on true stories, while the fourth (the CD's title track) is a knowing (?!) folkie-in-jokie cross-dressing song about a girl wanting to join an all-male Morris side. Of the purely traditional items, the most successful are those which do not rely on the "standard" versions or settings and thus score on enterprise as well as on quality of performance; into this category I'd place the duo's refreshingly sinister take on Twa Corbies, a deftly idiomatic take on the Irish bothy ballad Sweet Carlough Bay, and a lilting fast-paced triple-time Whitby-collected variant of Scarborough Fair that at least tries credibly to make sense of its potentially unmanageable structure, with due contrast provided by the ribald old sailor's song The Dockyard Gate. On songs such as this (and Half Hands Round itself), Alison's singing may be thought to recall the puckish charms of a young Shirley Collins, but in all fairness the word "charming" is one I'd use to describe Alison's delivery generally, along with "expressively beguiling" and "well-controlled".

It's also worth mentioning that Jack's occasional vocal contributions are no disgrace, and properly matched at the service of the song (most notably on Half Hands Round, of course!). This all adds up to a stylish and entertaining disc that delivers (and quite modestly at that) much more than it might at first seem to promise. The embroidery on the front cover's a nice touch too, by the way.

David Kidman