Crying Lion
Album: The Golden Boat
Label: Honest Jon's
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.tremblingbells.com

Crying Lion is a Glasgow-based a cappella singing group that specialises in strong and distinctive four-part harmony of a particularly adventurous kind. Two of its constituents (Alex Neilson and Lavinia Blackwell) are founder-members (and thus key components) of the mighty Trembling Bells, while the other pair (Harry Campbell and Katy Cooper) also perform with Muldoon's Picnic. Crying Lion combine elements of a number of different vocal traditions, ranging from English folk and American Sacred Harp through to Gregorian chant, medieval and madrigal and even some of the more esoteric branches of world music. Although the ensemble sound and blend may quite often be rather unorthodox, even distinctly challenging to the listener, especially at first hearing, there's also a very real sense of contentment - and spiritual comfort - about the firmly-grounded, solid performances delivered by this quartet.

I'll admit tho', I was taken aback just a touch on accessing the opening track (A Boy's Dream) to find a blinding, full-on incandescent instrumental introit - shrill, piercing organ, violin, tumbling percussion and what sounds like a trombone or serpent - in stately, albeit mightily disturbed processional; only after 45 seconds do the voices enter with their sombre tale, the "trembling bells and fanfares" subsequently having the last word. This is one of four tracks that deploy instrumental colourings; these both refract and enable (and, for that matter, ennoble) the portrayal of Alex's intriguingly referential and sometimes enigmatic lyrics, which are exactly as dubbed on the succinct press release: "a unique blend of the visionary and the earthly".

Thereafter, the resolutely a cappella John Ball's Blues - typically, not yer time-honoured 12-bar jobbie! - glides from florid folk-carol to handclap-backed mantra centred round JB's famous sermon-cum-rallying-cry (his address "When Adam delved…"). Lamp Of The Invisible Light is a Traherne-like metaphysical tract adorned with majestic brass choir for added pomp and circumstance. Christ Made A Trance is a comparatively straightforward folk madrigal with altogether calmer consonances. The title track is a stirring call-and-response number that draws on Bahaman traditional song and cannily brings in local (Glaswegian) references but then around halfway through goes seriously weird with spine-chilling high-pitched angelic keening and rumbling echo-effects (a bit like one of those decidedly strange passages on an early ISB album like Hangman's Beautiful Daughter). Five-minute epic The Kingdom Within begins as a plaintive lament sung solo by Lavinia with autoharp strum, lyrical violin and moody drumbeats, then takes on a Home-Service-like tenor for a brassy chorale which alternates with passages of provocative tartan-noir chant-like recitative. The Wakefield Anthem sets its creation-story just off the A61 in Yorkshire, while the deceptively gently-tender expression of closing track Tincture Of Tears audibly pays affectionate homage to the Copper Family while at the same time realistically recognising that "true beauty's always tempered by the fingerprint of pain".

Powerful stuff, that's for sure, for which the overall name-image of Crying Lion (proud and bold in appearance, character and expression, while inwardly vulnerable, sensitive and emotional) can be taken as distinctly apt. The self-styled, avowedly "intimate and glorious" feel of the music-making is brilliantly conveyed by the atmospheric recording, made in Govan Old Parish Church, even if definition of some individual parts or lines is occasionally a mite cluttered as a result. My only real quibbles about this compelling release are that a couple of the tracks employ the fadeout format, which doesn't seem necessary, and the whole album is way too short at less than half an hour.

David Kidman