Eliza Carthy & Tim Eriksen
Album: Bottle
Label: Navigator
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.elizacarthy.com
http://www.timeriksen.com

Preconceptions can be funny things - even informed ones that should guide expectations in the right direction. Even so, this release will still probably confound as much as it will stimulate, challenge, and yes delight the average listener. Both of the protagonists are seriously highly regarded for their intense appreciation of, and respect for, their folk heritage; their unwavering dedication to, and steadfast championing of, tradition; and their determinedly individual interpretations and reworkings of such material, each taking their own hardcore stance and an approach that's often innovative, revolutionary and invariably uncompromising. And good on 'em, I say!…

So, even taking into account this strong kinship between two like-minded and highly decorated (that means in terms of awards and degrees!) souls who've been friends for close on two decades, it's both a miracle and an inevitability that an artistic collaboration such as this album has gotten made. (It appears that opportunity was eventually afforded following offers of tours during the past couple of years, the final leg of this year's tour just now approaching its end.) And Bottle the album is everything I expected, and yet more! Its very title denotes the bravado-cum-bravery, the confidence, the taking of chances, the sheer daring - it's what these guys do, sure, but they also have the savvy, the deep-seated musicianship and the intelligence to carry it off. Bottle is a really exciting, edgy, energy-fuelled, seat-of-the-pants record; it has its less frenetic (even slightly pretty) moments too, sure, but even these can set those hairs rising on the back of the neck. It's also a distinctly scary record at times. Take the very opening track, Buffalo, which is not for the faint-hearted, no sir (those who are worried should probably skip straight to track 3, Castle By The Sea, or track 10, Whitby Lad, then work back later). Buffalo is a song with a decidedly strange and brutal text which is here matched with a similarly brutal musical setting - thrash-metal electric guitar at maximum distortion overlaying and choking and mirroring the fuzzy dancing wandersome fiddle melody line and underpinned by a doomy dull thudding drum rhythm. This harks straight back to Tim's primal musical adventures with Io and the wonderfully schizophrenic punk-folk-oldtime band Cordelia's Dad, yet it's just as blindingly radical a sound today; while of course Eliza's no stranger to musical experimentation so she's ideally simpatico and in tune (to say comfortable gives the wrong impression!) with Tim's method. This uncanny empathy carries on into the "balance-redressing" antidote of the follow-on song, Logan's Lament, on which Eliza's woeful delivery tugs at the emotions despite its more measured gait, beautifully counterpointed by controlled feedback from that electric guitar and boosted by Tim's extraordinarily sure vocal harmonies.

The joking-aside plight of the becalmed mariners of Cats And Dogs is well conveyed in Tim and Eliza's atmosphere-laden rendition, with insistent, nagging guitar and pizzicato fiddle propelling the action along the waters. Then for contrast we're transported to a rather jolly Sailor's Wedding (Tim may consider his setting "the catchiest and most unsingable tune I've ever made for a timeless old rhyme", but hell, to my mind it has the true ring of tradition!), the splendour of which is upstaged by Eliza's fiddle fairly catching fire on The Swiss Boy for its rousing playout. Tim's own engaging, thoroughly authentic yet original and often eccentric solo singing comes into the fore less often than you might expect, but his vocal contributions are always potent and memorable, and can be bitingly so, not least as a consequence of his cutting, hard-edged delivery.

The disc's emotional centrepiece has to be Eliza's peerless fiddle-song account of that "good weepie" Sweet Susan, every inch the tragic heroine. Elsewhere, Eliza turns in what has to be at once the eeriest and most desolate rendition of 10,000 Miles on record, with only pervasive buzzing-fly fiddle-strokes and sparse acoustic guitar for company. Equally idiosyncratic in its own way is the title track, whose syncopated Pow-R-Toc-H rhythm built on drumbeats and offset handclaps introduces a fluttering, wilful banjo to accompany Eliza's almost hallucinatory but carefree fa-la-la sourced from Pills To Purge Melancholy. You won't find electric guitars and stomping beats in Sacred Harp, but the Carthy/Eriksen version of Prodigal Son fair makes them sound almost natural as accompaniment, while the tribal demeanour of Traveler brings Sacred Harp chant closer to Captain Beefheart territory. The latter track forms an intriguing retrospective counterpart to May Song, which Eliza and Tim sing a cappella earlier on the disc (in one of its two live recordings). The closing track is a spellbinding, tenderly passionate (and brilliantly harmonised) take on Love Farewell that's both totally irresistible and utterly heartrending.

Eliza and Tim have each made some of the most important and influential tradition-based records of the past couple of decades, and I'm convinced that Bottle will immediately enter that illustrious canon. Oh, and it's an automatic front-runner for Record Of The Year that I honestly can't imagine being topped.

David Kidman