Ryan Boldt
Album: Broadside Ballads
Label: Dhal Street
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.ryanboldt.bandcamp.com

This is a record that many may find it all too easy to dismiss. Its 33 scant minutes may seem to pass by in an insubstantial haze, unfocused and laid-back. It's like spending a short time in the company of a friend's flatmate while you're waiting for the friend to return. But here's the weird thing - you end up really liking that guy, charmed by his lack of obvious presence, a quality that becomes a presence in itself. Let me try to explain.

Ryan's the frontman of Canadian folk-rock outfit The Deep Dark Woods, whose music I've yet to encounter - thus I was unprepared for this wholly unpRyan Boldtretentious solo collection, on which Ryan immerses himself in English traditional balladry of the kind favoured by, and latterly much the province of, singers such as Shirley Collins. For certain, five of its nine titles will be very familiar indeed to devotees of English traditional song - Just As The Tide Was Flowing, Ramble Away, Love Is Pleasin; etc. - and these have all received classic recordings from Shirley herself that have self-evidently provided Ryan with direct inspiration. His own singing also takes its cue from, but does not attempt to imitate, Shirley's style of revival singing - for it too is unaffected, almost to a fault on some songs where his almost total lack of expression or expressive or dynamic nuance might well be felt a turnoff for those listeners expecting anything approaching a radical or revelatory new young-folk take on these ballads. But here's the thing - somehow (and I'm still really not sure how) Ryan manages to make his interpretations count and puts a strangely individual, nay personal stamp on them.

The vast majority of the album sounds like it was recorded on Ryan's backporch step, or else in his living room with the windows open (birds twittering quite close by etc), there's a downhome lo-fi vibe and a distinct take-it-or-leave-it ambience, Ryan's own relaxed guitar accompaniment speaking volumes through its minimalist, non-attention-grabbing character that paradoxically holds your attention and clasps it to Ryan's curiously engaging vocal delivery. Just one of the five "English trad" songs, Poor Murdered Woman, receives a fuller setting, a leisurely treatment that cautiously approximates pacy folk-rock with electric guitar and drums (but the birdsong is still well audible!). The four songs that I might term "non-Collins-sourced" might seem strange bedfellows: the gospel rouser Leaning On The Everlasting Arms and spiritual The Welcome Table are both deliciously rendered with gentle foot-tapping rhythm and some gentle vocal harmonising from Kacy Anderson or banjo from Deep Dark Woods colleague Clayton Linthicum (he also contributes a number of other instruments, albeit very sparingly). The old-timey number Lazy John has a prominent thunderstorm for backdrop, while The Auld Triangle makes an unexpected comeback in Ryan's thoughtful, undemonstrative reading that deconstructs its usual "pub-shouty" character.

This album turns out to be a (perhaps perversely?) appealing disc that I shall be returning to rather often, I suspect. But please don't dismiss its charms out of hand on one hearing through harbouring loftier or great expectations.

David Kidman