Sproatly Smith
Album: The Minstrel's Grave
Label: Folk Police
Tracks: 12
Website: http://www.folkpolicerecordings.com

Another mesmerising and totally compelling release from Folk Police… One I just can't stop playing right through, over and again. It's an occupational hazard, I guess, but I got sucked into this simmering, shimmering vortex of insistent acid-folk sounds from the outset, and not even the prospect of the new Fay Hield album could entice The Minstrel's Grave to vacate the playing tray!

The opening track's sinister sound collage is like a visit to a half-remembered nursery (a kind of wyrd counterpart to the clockwork winding-up of Syd Barrett's Bike set to a background of chirping whirring insects), at length dissolving into an unsettling singsong lullaby that's the epitome of exactly what My Mother Said I never should…! The magic spell then weaves on through a further eleven tracks of singular charm and true weirdness, wherein strangely menacing angelic, floaty (and not always quite in-focus) female vocals and treated, generally acoustic textures (involving sundry guitars, flutes, zither, bucolic vibes, xylos and glocks and assorted percussive implements) are suffused with cuts of antiquarian found sounds and serendipitous imaginings (I use that word advisedly) to transport into the mind of the listener a cunning sequence of special quandaries of legend stemming mostly (but not exclusively) from folk tradition. It itches and scratches at your consciousness like the thing beyond the door, the lurker at the threshold, invoking memories you never knew you had (and then almost wish you hadn't), but in the most deliciously and perversely entrancing way (un)imaginable. The unfamiliar other-world it conjures is, we discover, of our world too.

D'you need reference points? OK - let's start with ISB, Forest, COB, Sharron Kraus, Mary Hampton, early Pink Floyd, Caravan, Comus, Strangelies, Tull, even experimental Dead… tendrils from all these earthly and unearthly folk and much more besides get entwined, sure, but Sproatly don't sound much like any of 'em, they've a pretty unique conception that's impossible to pin a tag anywhere near before it morphs away from your grasp like a will-o-the-wisp on speed. Elusive (and allusive), man… while at the same time organically and naturally conceived, and entirely without the pretentiousness that dogs the popular image of wyrdfolk.

Any disc that counterpoints imaginative reinterpretations/reworkings of two key psych tracks fondly cherished from my own personal memory-bank (Sun Also Rises' O Death and The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow side-closer Death) has to come with an instant advantage, but there's plenty more intelligently creative empathy in the conjoining of elements elsewhere. The wondrous nine-minute combination of (Maddy Prior's) The Fabled Hare and (Alex Harvey's) Isobel Goudie is a case in point, but there are several briefer examples too - the ethereal shifting pastoral swoon of The Mermaid Of Marden, the frost-fractured sitar-twinkling glisten of Blackthorn Winter, and the eerie storm-tossed trip down an alternate-universe Rosemary Lane (The Blue Flame).

On our journey through the record, we find interspersed among these song-based experiences the occasional delightfully evocative instrumental treasure like Song For Annie Needham (which portrays a visit to a veritable Olde Curiosity Emporium, the shop bell tinkling enticingly as we step gingerly over the threshold) and the almost casually encountered fireside aural patchwork of Silver Threads Among The Gold. The meaningful distortions of Elysium, on the other hand, present an unsettling, prickly gothic depiction of an uncertainly induced altered-state, whereas O Willow Way intrigues with a soundscape of spectral shufflings and ticking clock mechanisms.

The press handout proclaims that this is the mysterious Sproatly Smith's third full-length album. My only previous experience of Sproatly was an isolated track on the first (2007) Cold Spring John Barleycorn Reborn collection. According to said press release, Sproatly Smith springs "straight out of the folklore-soaked borderlands of the Herefordshire marches", but exactly who or what Sproatly Smith are (or were or will be), still resolutely remains an enigma, for the attractive digipackage contains virtually nothing of what might be termed informative pertinence except for the all-essential tracklisting; not even an extract from an 1889 map of the village of Sproatley gives much away (just the opposite in fact, for it turns out to be a whacking geographical red-herring!). But that's no cause for complaint - except that I believe the right guys should get credit where it's due, in this case for producing a uniquely haunting, original and thoroughly absorbing - if at times more than mildly challenging - record. As far as I'm concerned, the more challenging the better, as long as there's meaning, substance, artistic integrity and conviction at its root: and The Minstrel's Grave contains all those in spades - which are then used to bury us deep in the Sproatly earth, from which there really is no escape (take it from me!). Except, maybe, swift as the wind…

David Kidman