Before the recent release of his solo
acoustic retrospective Distant Days Steve Tilston collaborated with fellow
stalwart of the English folk scene Jez Lowe to produce The Janus Game. The rousing title track sets the scene with alternating
vocals, a memorable hook and a mellifluous blending of Tilston's guitar and
Lowe's bouzouki and harmonica.
These finely-crafted songs treat their
subjects with great affection, whether focusing on child refugees, a young
woman heading off to holiday in the sun or a pair of elderly friends. Unexpected
lyrical flourishes abound. In 'The Strings That Wizz Once Strummed' Tilston
sings: 'electrical bananas may have
played their part'. 'Leaving for Spain' has the wonderful couplet: 'Beneath some hot sun she believes she
belongs, Factor 50, silk sarong'. There are musical surprises too – the
melody to 'Mrs Einstein' is pleasingly reminiscent of Whistling Jack Smith's 'I
Was Kaiser Bill's Batman'.
The contrast between Tilston's vocals
and Lowe's tender, lulling voice (with its discernible north-eastern accent) is
very effective, as is the subtle use of Lowe's mountain dulcimer on 'Tattered
and Torn'. The stirring 'On Beacon Hill' could almost be a Gordon Lightfoot
song while 'Shiney Row' is wonderfully warm-hearted. The Janus Game shows how contemporary English folk music can embody
dignity, strength and compassion.
Like Tilston and Lowe, three times nominees
at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards Katriona Gilmore (fiddle, mandolin) and Jamie
Roberts (guitar) are an impressive duo. Comparisons with that other folk twosome,
Kathryn Roberts and Sean Lakeman, are a little inevitable - Jamie is Kathryn's
brother (while Sean is, of course, brother of Seth Lakeman.) Katriona demonstrates
some of the urgency of Seth's fiddle style on opening track 'Gauntlet' but, on
the whole, Gilmore & Roberts' approach is more restrained and gentle.
The cleverly punning 'Just a Piece of
Wood' is Katriona's affectionate homage to her instrument. We imagine the
narrator talking to a lover ... until the chorus: "I wish you could
explain every mark and every grain/Whose hands caressed your neck before I
could..."
This, their fifth studio album, alternates
Katriona's contrasting compositions with Jamie's. The centrepiece of the
collection, 'On the Line', is a reflection on the public's reactions to suicide
on railway tracks, and what this tells us about our society. This song's lyric also
gives the album its title: "And it goes much further than this station,
it's a problem of our kind/But a change must come somewhere down the
line..."
Tunisian-born French guitarist Marcel
Dadi was a master of the finger-picking style associated with Chet Atkins and
Merle Travis. A popular performer, composer and interpreter he was also held in
affection as a guitar teacher, thanks to his instructional videos and the
tablatures that accompanied his albums.
Tragically, in 1996, after being
honoured in Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame, Dadi was killed when TWA Flight
800 exploded. Marking the twentieth anniversary of his death, German label Acoustic
Music Records decided to assemble a host of outstanding guitarists to pay
tribute to Dadi's music with the release of this collection. Care has been
taken to vary the tempo between upbeat tracks like Albert Lee's version of 'Swingy
Boogie' and more reflective pieces like Martin Taylor's 'En attendant Joachim' and
Muriel Anderson's delicate 'Winther's Waltz'. Inevitably, though, a whole album
of guitar instrumentals performed by virtuosi players in honour of a celebrated
guitarist is likely to appeal more to guitar devotees than to the general
listener.
Pierre Bensusan contributes 'Waltz For
Paula' while Jacques Stotzem's driving 'L'écho des savanes' and Roland Dyens'
haunting 'Nous trois' are both astonishingly beautiful. Fittingly, the
collection concludes with Dadi's own version of 'Song for Chet'.
