Mary Humphreys & Anahata
Album: A Baker's Dozen
Label: Treewind
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.maryanahata.co.uk

From their East Anglia base, Mary and Anahata continue their tireless quest to bring back into circulation forgotten gems of the English tradition, and here present for our delectation an invigorating new collection that positively radiates joie-de-vivre and enthusiasm. The disc's principal interest lies in the intelligence and intuitive know-how which Mary and Anahata call into play in unearthing unusual versions of often well-travelled songs and/or creatively reworking and combining existing sources to provide fresh and stimulating reconstructions. For instance, we encounter versions of John Barleycorn and Barbara Allen collected in Fenland villages, done to tunes you'll almost certainly not have heard before, while John Riley turns out to be a variant of Lord Randall which, like the stewed eels mentioned therein, was (rather appropriately!) collected in Ely!… The Proud Pedlar, one of the most satisfying of Mary's painstaking adaptations, uses the tune which Vaughan Williams (the ballad's original collector) quoted within his incidental music to Aristophanes' The Wasps. The disc opens in what has become more familiar territory, with No My Love Not I (here re-recorded since it's constantly requested at gigs, and the duo's original Sharp Practice recording has now sold out).

Mary and Anahata accompany themselves with perennial ingenuity in a distinctive instrumental combination which typically involves banjo with cello or else melodeon or anglo concertina (Anahata) with English concertina (Mary), either permutation of timbres ideally suiting Mary's vibrant and earthy delivery. Only on the delightfully boisterous The Little Lousy Tailor does Mary sing unaccompanied. Attractive and well-sung though the disc's vocal items are, however, I was not altogether surprised to find myself almost as often repeat-playing the four instrumental items, which include the jolly, sprightly session jig medley The Valiant & Allexander and the strange (and somewhat unwieldily-titled) If You Will Not Have Me You May Let Me Go.

As a convenient by-the-way, a partial seasonal thread runs through the disc. This embraces a May song, a June tune, a souling song for October and a Christmas song, and yet the latter, the carol Sweet Chiming Bells, feels rather an anti-climax after the rest of the disc (and while its "cheesy chiming bells" and extra harmony parts may've made for fun in the studio it's the track I I've tended to replay least of all). A Baker's Dozen is home-studio-produced (following four albums made for WildGoose), and brilliantly captures the essence of Mary and Anahata, their vivacious and appealingly scholarly personalities and their frisky, abundantly infectious music-making.

David Kidman