If those gentle ripples of folk inspired contemporary music from pioneers like Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Anne Briggs, Davy Graham and Vashti Bunyan have run across your shores in the last couple of years then sit still and listen carefully. NANCY ELIZABETH has an album here that will find your pleasure centres within the first bars of its opening song. Sit through the full 13 tracks and I think you will be overwhelmed with delight.
If you already know something of NANCY ELIZABETH CUNLIFFE's earlier work, you're likely to be looking forward to hearing this new release. But I must report that I really wasn't prepared for how assured, how beautifully balanced, how fabulously grown up and musically astute this album would actually be. Time spent in the company of Jeremy Barnes, Heather Trost, Adem Ilhan and James Yorkstone has been maturing and perfecting her own considerable muse into something very special indeed.
There is a unity of place, mood and sound that only the very best albums achieve. Most of it was recorded in a cottage in Wales, some nearer home in a village hall near her native Manchester. Like Nina Nastasia's work, there is a purity in the execution. It has the feeling of being a solo work, but subtly, gradually and seductively a whole orchestra of exotic and beautiful instruments are threaded into the performance.
NANCY ELIZABETH plays finger style acoustic guitar and a 22 string Celtic harp. I can’t help feeling that she is familiar with the open, freewheeling and lustrous sound of the classic Transatlantic "Bert and John" album from 1966. There's something about the organic, inquiring development of her arrangements that kept drawing me back to those recordings. And now I notice that as part of the tour to promote the new album she will be playing a support slot on a Renbourn gig. Well. Worth travelling to, I'd say.
The album's orchestra adds her own voice in layers of harmony, with electric guitar and bass, melodica, dulcimer, harmonium, glockenspiel, bells, melody box, khim, bouzouki, violin and percussion (all played by herself). In addition, extra players introduce trumpet, flugelhorn, cello, clarinet, double bass, extra guitars, synth bass and mandolin. The quality of the playing is consistently excellent - there are no passengers, all are integral and all contribute.
The album opens gently, with solo voice and harp. A guitar, a bass and cellos blend in gradually, playing their own strong lines that express so much more than the rather careful reserve of the lyrics. Each tune takes a different texture of instruments, with everything made interesting, surprising and fresh. "I Used To Try" (the single released on September 7th) makes excellent use of some vigorous drumming that has something of the village marching band about it.
"Off With Your Axe" has a lot of that Jansch/Renbourn feel in it’s first section. Two guitars dance around each other and are eventually joined by a sparkling array of extra sounds once the voice has opened up. The mysterious, incantation of a song sounds medieval, but shocks with references to sandwiches and a northern industrial landscape. I'm fascinated and a little scared.
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"The Remote Past" is a private reflection of a song, tingling with strings and wayward sounds. It gives way to "Coriander" which is an altogether more expansive and original thing. "You smell of coriander", she sings. The full orchestra wanders in, as if uninvited, but confident of being welcomed. "You taste like fennel to me" she continues. Someone seems so to be dancing clumsily in a corner of the room. The wind instruments sway with peasant gusto. A flugel solo soars, echoing into the roof space, and breaks everybody's heart. As it ends it seems to rejoin it's brass band origins and we remember the north of England again.
It’s only for a moment though, because instrumental track "8 Brown Legs" introduces those Roma-sounding hammered dulcimer tones that A Hawk and a Hacksaw deployed last time round. "Electric" is an evocative, contemporary commentary on the sort of thing that Pentangle might have done. It's mostly a finger style electric guitar and several vocal tracks, but it has real power. "Hey Son" is close to folk song as we normally understand it. But it does end in a rage of sound: "it's a hard life" she sings. "Weakened bow" is a kind of blues with harmonium and ethereal backing vocals.
"What is Human" is another short instrumental track of a melancholic hue that washes though "Lung" and "How Can I stop", a song that quivers with bowed strings and eases into a stronger sunlit kind of place as large voice parts are added and we shift into something more like a major key and a long flowing tune on a violin. It is beautiful thing. Delicate and warm.
The finale is the 5 minutes 37 seconds of "Battle and Victory" itself. It could be Bert Jansch playing the introduction. NANCY ELIZABETH's voice is straight, true and distinctively accented. The song hovers for a moment, then picks up tempo and a little percussion is added. A long, subtle and dramatically satisfying crescendo is developed and the album is over. Despite a very decent 44 minutes it seems too short. NANCY ELIZABETH has bewitched us with emotionally intelligent music and kept us guessing and intrigued, lyrically speaking. Start with the single to get the drift. But you'll want the album to experience the full binding of spell.
www.nancyelizabeth.co.uk
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