Elle Osborne
Album: It's Not Your Gold Shall Me Entice
Label: 9th House
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.elleo.com

Fiercely independent fiddle-singer Elle first came to my attention in 2001 with Testimony, a well nigh unique album on which she set out her very special personal stall with some highly individual and penetrating interpretations of a wide range of songs both traditional and contemporary. During the years immediately following Testimony, Elle's abundant and insatiable creativity was to lead her down all manner of experimental byways with a number of different, intriguing projects, and it was almost a decade (far too long!) before Elle made it into the recording studio again… and that was only to contribute a track to the Peter Bellamy tribute album Oak Ash And Thorn. After which I was glad to see Elle cautiously re-emerge with a defiantly quirky EP (Good Grief), after which one might say So Slowly Slowly Got She Up a full-length album of that very title for the Folk Police imprint, which further proved her status as a defiantly original talent whose bold stance would take no prisoners, while at the same time providing evidence of just how far that talent had evolved and how tellingly she was to mirror the contemporary psych-folk zeitgeist while remaining true to her own artistic vision.

Elle had also garnered more than a few influential friends along the way, including Alasdair Roberts and Trembling Bells' innovative free-form drummer Alex Neilson. These two men provide a key onward link to Elle's just-released third full-length album, being noticeably, distinctively audibly present in the role of collaborative performers (on four and six tracks respectively), while Alex's Trembling Bells colleague Mike Hastings contributes guitar to all but two tracks (and at times other eccentricities such as jew's harp, autoharp and yea, tubular bells!). The disc's title is the opening line of verse 3 of the traditional song Come Write Me Down, this track - a stark, intimate and lovingly understanding solo rendition of the Copper Family classic - forming a bridge between Elle's from-the-womb grounding in traditional song ("never-not-known") and her penchant for seeking out a challenging or determinedly contemporary angle to its interpretation. Here Elle's matchless, slightly breathless vocal performance comes across as a percipient combination of innocence and experience, set to a disquieting tick-tock pizzicato (fiddle and cello) cross-rhythm. (Then again, the cynical observer might well view the album title as Elle's rebuff to the alien idea of a major-label sellout!) Surrounding Come Write Me Down, the remainder of the album consists of Elle's own compositions (a first for her - and, on this showing, not before time!). These are uniformly excellent, and form a celebration of survivors and survival, as much through the musical and textual expression of an independent spirit as through a significant degree of reflection of the survival of a multiplicity of influences and inspirations into Elle's own music (I guess).

The album's opening gambit (I Don't Like Sundays) calls us to attention with its purposeful, statuesque folk-rock beat and a veritable Christmas-single's peal of bells (I'm tempted to remark that in an alternate universe, this could've been the ISB making a festive-fifty chart entry!…) This intro heralds the appearance of Elle's arresting voice manipulating a magnificently melismatic (and moodily mellifluous) melody line that meanders around in mystical majesty. This alone shows how far Elle's singing has developed from the raw and sometimes slightly abrasive instrument of the Testimony era (appealing though this was in its own way) into something arguably even more extraordinary. Every reviewer of this CD has been supplied with a ready-made description of Elle's voice by Alex - "a cross between Lal Waterson and Nico" - and yes, there are distinct touches of regional accent still, but Elle's vocal character is altogether less glacial, its demeanour having an intrinsic warmth and an untutored Anne Briggs-like purity, while also almost casually relishing its Robin-Williamson-like wilful wandersome decorations: all (one might say) strangely soothing but oddly normal. The provocative realities of the oh-so-slightly-enigmatic lyric of I Don't Like Sundays display a disarming intelligence at work.

The next song, Salt, adopts a deceptively singsong chiming refrain for its sharply observant, poignant fishing-industry-themed lyric that's shot through with echoes back to Elle's own family history and resonances of the trawling-trade songs of John Conolly and Bill Meek. Continuing the maritime bent, there's This Ship Is On A List - and literally, too, as it turns out, with Elle's cheerily-cheery (ironic!) litany of seadoggery litigation set to a perversely charming, deceptively cosy 60s-folk-style (S&G/early-Dylan) lilt with a touch of mariachi sax and a restless backdrop of tumbling heave-ho drumming, as the leak-ridden vessel is tossed about on the waves.

And Everything is a delectable marriage of music and words, as it builds its case from pitiably desolate fiddle drone to mournful bluesy slide, the ostensibly frivolous tone and cheeky playground rhythms of its controlled scattergun wordplay barely concealing its caustic intent; as the singer hammers her chummy warning home with increasing insistence, the tempo accelerates into a rollicking jew's-harp-twanging old-timey breakdown-cum-hoedown. Both complementary and tenderly succinct, The Hired Hand then lays bare the voices and harmonies of Elle and her cryptically-monikered singing partner Dusty Springsteen (ha!) and contains more of Elle's by-now-trademark carefully, delightfully relevant wordplay.

The incandescent full-band country-waltz-style number Toast (The Ballad Of Michael "Mini" Cooper) recounts with sympathy and insight the true story of a child arsonist, drawing the honest conclusion "it doesn't take much to see what you did was a cry not a crime". The mournful, beautiful fiddle-rich Undone finds Elle taking on the mantle of traditional ballad (with a tune a tad reminiscent of No More Shall I Work In The Factory). Finally, All One sets Elle's tender, resigned vocal against a tough, punkish reverbed-electric guitar riff (Wild Thing, I think I love you), hammering out the incontrovertible, literal truth of the axiom "It's one small space and a letter between all one and alone" - so obvious really, but it takes a canny songwriter like Elle to point it out. That's yet another instance to support my contention that we can now add the tag of master songwriter to Elle's known considerable gifts as singer and fiddle-player; the quality of tellingly economic expression invites us to share her confidences which emerge in the shape of seemingly almost incidental linguistic discoveries that involve her in unpretentiously indulging her keen penchant for punningly pointing punchy correspondences.

Incidentally, the cover photo of Elle's beer-swigging grandma (taken at a 60s folk-festival's drinking competition, I hasten to add) bestows a skewed (and likely somewhat deceptive) perspective that coheres well with the enclosed disc's presentation of the songs and their sentiments. On a purely musical front, It's Not Your Gold Shall Me Entice is almost certainly Elle's most listener-friendly album yet, but it makes no hollow concessions to accessibility and Elle resolutely follows her own muse in the company of like-minded musical bedfellows whose brilliantly apposite contributions provide the ideal foil. For entice this album certainly does, and it proves both compulsive and seriously addictive listening.

David Kidman