This is a simply outstanding recording by an artist whose development as an individual musician is nothing short of astonishing. BENJAMIN WETHERILL has always been distinctive and arresting. His earliest performances, like those of DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON, caused an immediate stir in the City of Leeds where he is based. Noel Coward, George Formby and the English folk tradition were neatly and idiosyncratically reworked. But something has driven him far beyond the first successes to explore and develop those half-glimpsed possibilities that trembled somewhere between folk song, music hall and jazz. Along the way a number of people have noticed and approved, knowing that there was something about to emerge.
Among them was Jeremy Barnes (NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL and A HAWK AND A HACKSAW). At Barnes's invitation, WETHERILL travelled to Hungary to record this album on Barnes's mobile equipment in Budapest and in the nineteenth century fairytale castle in Tura. Heather Trost (violins and viola) and musicians from the HUN HANGAR ENSEMBLE were recruited, with Barnes and Wetherill being jointly credited with production.
The songs and arrangements are mostly Wetherill's own. Extracts from James Thornton's 1898 "When You Were Sweet Sixteen" are nestled into "Kissing Under Poplars".Another Wetherill song "Oh Sorrow" contains parts of the traditional "Lass from The Low Country" and an extract from "Come Sorrow Come" by the 16th century madrigal composer Thomas Morley. "Shallow Brown" is the one complete traditional song.
These disparate elements are brought together as a whole album of very distinctive time, place and voice. It is common enough to declare an album to be a single piece, but this easily qualifies as a work of unity. It stands apart from earlier EPs, singles and live performances and has (perhaps) already been left behind in some aspects of the live performance.
Laura opens with "For All The Headlines", a classic original song whose rolling guitar tune bundles the listener, gently at first, and then with the compulsion of added violin into a short sweet expression of love, amid birdsong and the turning of the world.
From that generous opening it proceeds, without a break, into the halting clarinet chorus of "Ada", and on towards eight more romances. The album quivers with mystery, archetype and yearning. The streams of music hall, concert party, Celtic folk song, diasporal European dance music and contemporary poet/balladeer flow around imagined histories and personal stories. The album is named for Laura Parsons (whose artwork appears on the cover). Its delicate playfulness will tease and beguile any listener of any sex or orientation who knows the trepidation or joy of romantic love and it will delight all who have known both.
"So Dark The Night", with more birdsong, is chanson-style with a complex melody and a simple arrangement that brings in touches of bowed double bass, clarinet, bratch (I think!) and violin. "Folds In The Curtain" allows Jeremy Barnes in to play some well-placed accordion in a song of memory, lost love and a vapour of death and darker things.
In "Kissing Under Poplars" Wetherill's ever-precise finger style guitar takes a rich leading role. Ghosts of JOSEF LOCKE and AL JOLSON are summoned with lines from James Thornton's song and we are led on to the story of a green-eyed lover who "broke all my fingers and laughed at my sighs". (or is it "size"?) The lyrics, with all the austerity and bleak comedy of a Scots ballad, conjure vivid moments and precisely ambiguous scenes. And then, half way through the album, the sounds of the HUN HANGAR ENSEMBLE are brought into full voice. A cart seems to roll into the song as it ends and the band stand playing a lament in a cobbled town square, with Ferenc Kovácks' trumpet to the fore and hints of a funeral somewhere in the East European distance.
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"A Willowing" is altogether prettier, decorated with guitar and tin whistle, and beautifully poetic in in its miniaturist lyrics. Zsolt Kürtösi's double bass and additional voices join the tin whistle in a delightful closing dance. The stately "Shallow Brown" is at track seven, with its evocative prelude of natural and electronic sounds. The song is delivered with a running guitar and carefully judged additions. It's deft modesty keeps well back from the glories of JUNE TABOR's recorded version and is all the better for it.
"Black Waterside" would seem to be the folk song associated with BERT JANSCH and plundered from him by JIMMY PAGE. But this is a new song of Benjamin's own making. It's a song that Jansch could have played, and might yet. Again, the addition of ambient sounds and a gradual accommodation of Heather Trost, THE HUN HANGAR ENSEMBLE and extra voices are well-judged enrichments. Balász Unger's virtuoso cymbalom playing is a highlight.
"How Lonely The Moon" has solo trumpet making its own weary way through a Hungarian evening, discovering a song of weary contentment, whistled first as a sophisticated melody and eventually sung as the resigned confession of a terminal romantic: "how could I explain myself after this? / You caught me dreaming in the July, caught me with a love I can't resist". And, more mischievously tragic: "How useless my songs are. / For what use are words, now you're gone? And what good are the stars?" How could we not fall in love for this delicate seduction?
"Oh Sorrow" has the difficult task of closing an album we would not want to leave. Sari Kovácks' flute begins and the remaining six and half minutes bring back all the elements that have made the preceding tracks so rewarding. It is a song in its own right, but it stands as a reprise of the romance, the musical borrowing, the experimentation and the tradition that make "Laura" such a wonderful record.
www.benjaminwetherill.co.uk
www.last.fm/music/Benjamin+Wetherill
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