Mary Jane
Album: Solstice
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 11
Website: http://www.mary-jane.info

Now here's a surprise. A home-grown (Southampton-based) folk-rock band that not even the hardened folk-rock aficionados of my acquaintance seem to have heard of, even tho' they've been going strong for a touch over 20 years now. They formed at the tail-end of 1993 (out of the ashes of psychedelic band The Magic Cat), and spent a considerable time being better-known on the European scene, releasing their first four albums on the German label September Gurls along with a series of enticing offshoot projects, and all with a succession of personnel changes that would tax a Pete Frame family tree. The good guys at Talking Elephant saw sense and signed the band in 2010, releasing first their especially fine album Eve and then a year or so later a chunky retrospective collection, Brigit's Daughter. 2014 has seen Mary Jane attempting to push ever harder into the UK scene, with several festival bookings where their solid, reliable - and intelligently fresh-minted - brand of old-school folk-rock by all accounts went down a storm (but only appearing in the south of the country it seems, more's the pity).

Mary Jane's website claims they're "England's premier electrifying folk-rock band", which I suppose is a bit extravagant really - but hey, who can blame 'em for trying?! New album Solstice finds the band attempting to re-justify that claim while consolidating the success of Eve, but overall I'm not so sure they've managed either. Not that it's a below-par set by any means; maybe it's just that the excellence of Eve was in my opinion far too hard an act to follow. And if you've not yet latched onto Eve, you'd likely think Solstice a mighty fine record. It contains a handful of expectedly stonking takes on traditional material, notably a heavy-duty grind through House Carpenter and a tempo-shifting version of Tamlin that's admittedly somewhat in the shadow of both Steeleye and Fairport (though the largely acoustic, banjo-backed Rain And Snow is an altogether more restrained affair by contrast). The instrumental items (and the various tunes which arise out of songs) come off predictably well (too predictably maybe), while the playing has guts and fire aplenty and Mary Jane clearly believe 100% in their modus operandi.

And by and large, they do convince. With the primary colours of fiddle (Gillie Hotston), flute (Jo Quinn) and guitars (Paul Alan Tylor) sounding loud and proud, and a suitably energised rhythm section (Steve Barker and Jon Hawkes), every band member plays his/her part to the manner born, though I could once again single out for special mention Jo's soaring lead vocal work, which it has been remarked bears traces of Renaissance's Annie Haslam - just as some of the Quinn/Taylor originals may recall the rockier of the other band's songs, but only momentarily perhaps. The opening three tracks are impressive and would appear thematically linked through to the closing acoustic foray And The Fire Burns On, but in between those points the album feels more piecemeal somehow, and the parade of contrasts doesn't entirely remove a sense of lack of cohesion or overall progression in terms of direction. Good though the album is as a whole, with a forceful presence and good production values maintained, in the end I feel a slight sense of disappointment, in that it could have been quite a bit more. I have to admit, I miss the frissons of adventure, the hair-prickling moments, that characterised so much of the Eve album, for which any amount of continuing confidence can't quite compensate.

David Kidman