Agent Starling's ‘Northern Lights Trilogy’ - a blast of seasonal cheer

One of the most innovative bands to appear in the past year has been Agent Starling, who have wasted no time in following up their debut album European Howl with a gorgeous seasonal EP offering - Northern Lights Trilogy.  

Agent Starling is an unusual duo, a pairing of hurdy-gurdy player Quentin Budworth with Louise Duffy-Howard (aka Lou Loudhailer.) Back in the 1980s, the latter was the bassist with one of my favourite indie bands, Red Guitars. When lockdown restrictions scuppered their usual musical projects, the two decided to create Agent Starling and record European Howl, a complex, immersive and at times disorienting listening experience. Its opening track ‘Helicopter Arms’ set the tone – pulsating, intriguing, the distinctive droning, buzzing but melodic sound of the hurdy-gurdy and whispered, spoken-word vocals (à la Traffic’s ‘Hole in My Shoe’.)

There were some traditional tunes on the album too – an agreeably ambient version of the Elizabethan carol ‘Drive the Cold Winter Away’ and a suitably inebriated-sounding ‘The Parting Glass’. By contrast, ‘Minor Surgery’ was a cyber-Morricone soundtrack with whipcrack noises and a splendid rumbling bassline. Throughout, the contributions of guest violinist/cellist Dexter Duffy-Howard added a lot to the overall texture.

So, I was delighted to hear that Agent Starling had decided to follow on from this engaging and original debut with the Northern Lights Trilogy EP or, as Lou describes it, “three new festive singles that add a bountiful sprinkling of bells, twinkles and festive spirit to our catchy hurdy-gurdy tunes, hypnotic drones, live bass grooves & strings.”

The three festive singles in question are ‘The Cordwainer’s Lament’, ‘Northern Lights’ and ‘Stockport Polka’. ‘The Cordwainer’s Lament’ sounds like an atmospheric musical walk down a snowy country lane. ‘Northern Lights’ is not – in case you were wondering - the 1978 hit by prog-rock band Renaissance but a totally different song, which mixes spoken-word with musical quotes from Prokofiev’s ‘Troika’ (if it was good enough for Greg Lake to borrow, it’s good enough for Agent Starling.) It’s a joyful, wintry offering. Amid a soundscape of sleigh bells and church bells, Lou sings “I know you yearn for calm, long for night, but my heart dances with the Northern Lights.” Finally, we have the exuberant ‘Stockport Polka’ (familiar as the tune that Jona Lewie used for his unlikely 1980 Christmas hit, ‘Stop the Cavalry’) but here performed with plenty of cymbals and a warbling sound on the hurdy-gurdy that sounds strangely like steel drums.

It’s all terrific fun and, for me, it’s the 2021 equivalent of the Cocteau Twins’ glorious 1993 Christmas EP Snow. If you’re short of Christmas cheer this year, you could do worse than to go to Bandcamp and get hold of the Northern Lights Trilogy.

But that’s not all! I’m reliably informed that Agent Starling are poised to release a second album in 2022. And, as if these weren't enough glad tidings, Red Guitars have reformed and, if the fates allow, will be touring in 2022. 

Nursing literary ambitions

My short story Weekend On Call has just been published. I’m delighted for two reasons. First, this is the second of my short stories to be published this year – my story Eastgate Clock was published in the March issue of Firewords magazine. Second, Weekend On Call was shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize last year but didn’t make it through to the final selection. However, I then discovered it had been longlisted for the 2021 Bournemouth Writing Prize and was subsequently selected to be included in The Waves of Change, an anthology of short stories and poetry published by Fresher Publishing. I’m looking forward to reading all the other contributions in the collection.

Weekend On Call is an entirely fictional account of a weekend in the life of a mental health nurse manager. The combination of an alcohol problem, work-related stress and difficulties in his marriage lead to a crisis, as he struggles with his own mental health while being expected to oversee the management of mental health services over the weekend period. In the story, the on-call manager recalls something he was told back when he first trained as a mental health nurse:

           Back inside the house, you put the bleep and the on-call mobile on the coffee table and sit in an armchair, in the dark. You notice you can’t stop crying. When you did your nurse training all those years ago, you remember someone saying that to work in mental health you had to be ‘okay in yourself’. What did that mean? That you had to have good mental health in your own right? That you had to have a stable home life, a secure relationship, a happy marriage?

The Waves of Change is a remarkably apt title from my point of view. By a strange quirk the book's publication coincides with my decision not to renew my registration as a mental health nurse. I retired from the NHS in 2016 (but maintained my professional registration as I then began a second career as a senior lecturer in mental health nursing.) When my late wife became terminally ill I decided to retire from nurse education, ultimately becoming her full-time carer. Waves of Change indeed – retirement followed by widowerhood. But it is only now, as my professional registration comes up for renewal, that I am finally, officially un-becoming a registered nurse. I began my nurse training in 1983 so there hasn’t been a time in the past 38 years when I haven’t considered myself involved in mental health nursing. 

Relinquishing my nurse registration could be seen as another major life event and another loss. In one way I do feel like I’m surrendering a major part of who I am, but I’m considering it an opportunity to become something else. Now, having retired twice, I feel it’s time to let go of nursing and to focus more on my other lifelong interests – writing and music. That’s why it’s so good to have some of my fiction published this year. And so I begin my third career – this time as a full-time writer and musician. It sounds, somehow, so much more interesting than ‘retired mental health nurse’.   

The Waves of Change is published by Fresher Publishing and is available from all good bookstores.

This blog post is published simultaneously on my other blog: Tony Gillam on Creativity, Wellbeing and Mental Health 

From wistful synth-pop to masterful folk – Celebrating Worcester's Huntingdon Hall

One of my favourite live music venues is Worcester's Huntingdon Hall - a former 18th century Methodist chapel which continues to play host to an eclectic array of artists. Over the years, I’ve seen guitar wizards like Gordon Giltrap and Eduardo Nuebla, singer-songwriter Dean Friedman and prog-folk legends like Focus, The Strawbs, Magna Carta and Caravan. (Many of these shows are memorialised here on this very blog. Just use the ‘search’ button to revisit those.)

Now that live shows are getting going again I’ve been tempted back twice to Huntingdon Hall in the last two months. In October I saw – for the second time – eighties synth-pop balladeers China Crisis. I’d last seen them here almost exactly two years previously, and that earlier gig is poignantly memorable for being the last live concert that I ever went to with my late wife. We had been pleasantly surprised both by the charming familiarity and warmth of the music and the hilarious banter of singer Gary Daly, whose wit is more entertaining than many a stand-up comedian. Songs like Christian, Wishful Thinking and Black Man Ray have an enduring wistfulness.

When I saw China Crisis again last month the music was every bit as uplifting and the repartee every bit as funny. When some audience members began to call out to him between songs, Gary responded: ‘Ah, audience interaction! We like that because, to be honest, for a minute I thought you were all f***ing dead.’

Fewer laughs were to be had at last week’s Martin Simpson gig. I’d last seen Martin Simpson at Huntingdon Hall in 2010. This distinctive English folk singer, guitarist and songwriter is now 68 years old but he continues to dazzle with his mellifluent guitar playing and unaffecting singing. There were one or two self-deprecating jokes but this is an artist who takes his art seriously and whose audience respect him for that. A subtle, occasional use of delay on the vocals was supplied by the sound engineer rather than pedals, causing a few in the audience to question their sanity. Highlights included a quasi-bluegrass version of Dylan’s Buckets of Rain and a moving rendition of Donal Óg (Young Donald) as well as Martin’s always touching tribute to his dad, Never Any Good.

From wistful synth-pop to masterful folk, we’re very blessed to have venues like Huntingdon Hall.

The Surprise and Delight of Music

The coffee house chain Starbucks used to have a set of idiosyncratic guiding principles which they felt set them apart from competitors. A bestselling book - The Starbucks Experience: Five Principles for Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary – extolled the virtues of these 'people-driven philosophies.' These included ideas like ‘everything matters’ and ‘leave your mark’, but the one that resonated most with me was something they called ‘surprise and delight’.

'Surprise and delight' is a marketing strategy that aims to attract and nurture customers and increase customer loyalty and engagement by providing unexpected rewards.  

I saw one example of this from the original source, as it were, in a Starbucks in Manhattan. It was a cold and wet February day and we had time to kill – we’d checked out of our hotel but it was too early to head back to the airport so we gratefully huddled in a corner of the café with our luggage and our two rather grumpy teenage children. I ordered coffee and paninis and was surprised – and, yes, I suppose, delighted – when the barista told me they had a selection of new cakes and pastries and asked if we’d like some free samples. She also presented us with complimentary cake-forks to keep as souvenirs. Word must have got around quickly as a steady stream of homeless people began to arrive, thankful for the generous offerings of free cake. It was heartening to see that the staff made the homeless customers just as welcome as the swanky businessmen who, with mobile phones and laptops, used the cafe as a remote office, answering emails, writing reports, even holding meetings with clients – all for the price of a cup of coffee. More than the free souvenir cake-forks, the staff’s attitude towards the less fortunate members of society surprised and delighted me.

Before you begin to suspect me of working for Starbucks, I should say, of course, that other coffee shops are available, absolutely. In fact, I prefer the coffee made by some of their competitors. But this isn’t really about coffee shops. Much as I like coffee and cake, my point is about the things in life that surprise and delight us and, for me, nothing does this more than music – shapeshifting, time-travelling music. Let me explain...

As a teenager I discovered the music of Scottish singer-songwriter Donovan. I had a budget-priced album of his which included a haunting track called ‘Donna, Donna’. When I started playing guitar myself this was one of the first songs I learnt. It's originally a Yiddish folk song about a calf being led to slaughter – an unlikely choice for Donovan to release as a single in 1965, (though Joan Baez had also released a version five years earlier.) I probably haven't heard the song for thirty years or more but, on a recent trip to Edinburgh, I happened upon a great little pub called The Captain’s Bar. Musicians were sitting outside at tables, taking turns to play and, though I had no instrument with me, I was welcomed and invited to join them. Various songs and tunes were performed and then one of them surprised and delighted me by singing ‘Donna, Donna’. I was instantly transported back to the thirteen-year-old me, getting to grips with that tricky A minor chord.

Cut to 1981. I'm living in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, and browsing in a record shop. The sales assistant puts on an album and the music is – well, yes, surprising and delightful. I ask what the record is and it turns out it's the latest release by Breton folk-rock band Tri Yann, An heol a zo glaz. One track in particular, ‘Si mort a mors’, is so striking I immediately buy the album. I later learn the song is based on a poem written on the death of Duchess Anne of Brittany in 1514. I assume the tune is a traditional Breton one. More of this later.

Seventeen years after discovering the music of Tri Yann I made a nostalgic return trip to Brittany, now with wife and children in tow. We arrived in the pretty town of Dol-de-Bretagne on market day, just as the traders were setting up. One of them sold records and was playing a song which wafted across the square towards us. It was a heart-stopping moment, the music a fusion of Breton folk and hip-hop beats, the verses a rap in French and the chorus a stirring, vaguely familiar refrain. You guessed it – it surprised and delighted us so that when, later that week, we heard it playing as background music in a supermarket, I just had to ask someone what the record was so I could buy it. I accosted a teenager who helpfully told me it was a band called Manau. Heading for the CD section I discovered the song that was following us around was ‘La Tribu de Dana’ and had just topped the French charts. The irresistible and vaguely familiar chorus was a sampling of Breton harpist Alan Stivell’s 1970s folk-rock hit ‘Tri Martolod’.

One final example: I was recently listening to Mark Radcliffe's BBC Radio 2 Folk Show when his guests were Northern Irish trio, TRÚ. They selected a track by Skara Brae called ‘An Cailín Rua’. I instantly recognised the tune as ‘Si mort a mors’. A revelation. So, it seems, it's not a Breton song about Duchess Anne after all but, as was explained on the show, a love song about a red-haired girl, from the Donegal area! Well, okay, it’s both, since the tune is used to accompany two quite different lyrics.

Of course, it’s quite possible that Tri Yann borrowed the Donegal tune from Skara Brae, just as Donovan might have borrowed ‘Donna, Donna’ from Joan Baez, and Manau borrowed a chorus from Alan Stivell. But it all goes to show – never mind coffee and cakes; it’s music, with its unique ability to transform itself and transport us back and forth in time, that’s most likely to surprise and delight us.

Brickfields, monkeys and murder - three folk albums reviewed

It was back in 2018 at the Beardy Folk Festival when I first saw Granny’s Attic - three young men who manage to create the authentic sound of traditional English folk music. Quite how three such young men could make such old music – and yet make it sound new and fresh – was a mystery to me.  The trio – Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne (melodeon, anglo concertina), guitarist George Sansome and Lewis Wood (violin) – have been impressing audiences across Europe since 2009 and have released two previous CDs before this month’s new release The Brickfields.

Produced with a micro-grant from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, The Brickfields was recorded live in just three days in April 2021. It’s a fine example of a recent new phenomenon – the post-lockdown album. Having spent most of 2020 scattered in various separate corners of the UK the band couldn’t wait to get together and play again, and that pent-up energy – and the joy of reunion – comes across in the nine superbly-played instrumentals that make up The Brickfields.

If you should meet an alien from the Planet Zog and they ask you what quintessentially English folk music sounds like just point them in the direction of Granny’s Attic.

Another band who are rapidly becoming festival favourites are Southampton-based quartet Monkey See, Monkey Do. Their debut album The Night Out may have been a little overlooked in the chaos of last year. This is music firmly rooted in the English and Irish folk traditions featuring guitar, fiddle and bodhrán with the unusual addition of clarinet. I haven’t yet had the pleasure of seeing the band live but, judging by the cover art and the choice of material, Monkey See Monkey Do seem a lively, fun-loving bunch, with a suitably salty repertoire, from the tale of a wicked pirate called 'Alexander the Great' to 'The Drunken Sailor' (yes, really, that famous drunken sailor who poses such a quandary to his crew mates, ear-ly in the morning.) 

The clarinet blends well with the more conventional instrumentation, particularly on tracks like 'The Night Out and the Hangover' and 'Superfly' (which is apparently unconnected with Curtis Mayfield's funk-soul hit of the same title.)

Monkey See Monkey Do demonstrate how well they play together as a unit on the reels that make up 'The A & E Tunes' and in their full-bodied rendition of 'Farewell to Erin'. With only eight tracks The Night Out is a fast-moving but thoroughly enjoyable selection of songs and dance tunes.

For a more introspective – and altogether stranger take on folk music – you might want to try David A. Jaycock. David has previously collaborated with Marry Waterson and James Yorkston. His album Murder, and the Birds is a dark, eccentric exploration of British traditional folk, inspired by a Victorian anthology called Ballads and Songs of Lancashire. 'Lord Townley's Ghost', 'Pendle Hill' and 'The Murderous Huntsman' are given the Jaycock treatment: detuned acoustic guitar accompaniment and occasional eerie touches of pre-digital synthesisers. 'The Murderous Huntsman' epitomises the sound - a dreamy gem of a track, reworked so as to no longer celebrate the hunter's life so much as his death, leaving the animals and birds free from fear.

Half the tracks originate from Lancashire, half from other regions. Jaycock's version of 'John Barleycorn' is musically rather uneventful and thus is an odd choice as an opening track. But things get more adventurous and more atmospheric as the album progresses.

Jaycock's melodic sense is very Beatlesque. Everywhere there are shades of John Lennon songs and the double-tracked vocals only add to the Lennon effect.

Murder, and the Birds is a quirky, unsettling reimagining of traditional English folk.

The Brickfields by Granny’s Attic is out now on Grimdon Records. Monkey See, Monkey Do’s The Night Out was self-released. Murder, and the Birds by David A. Jaycock was released by the remarkable Triassic Tusk Records - a small label based in the East Neuk of Fife.

Prose dissolving into poetry - 'Dark Neighbourhood' by Vanessa Onwuemezi reviewed

Dark Neighbourhood is a debut in two senses – this is both Vanessa Onwuemezi’s first book of short stories and (I think I’m right in saying) Fitzcarraldo Editions’ first foray into short story collections (alongside their novels, novellas and essays.)

These seven stories make for an unsettling read. I read the opening titular story in August, just as the news was full of the catastrophe at Basra airport, with countless Afghans trying to flee the Taliban. Real world events gave an added sense of eerie desperation to the scene conjured up in Dark Neighbourhood, in which people seem to be queuing at the gate to another world after society has collapsed.

Onwuemezi is experimental in her prose style, the paragraphs of prose often dissolve into lines of free poetry and, in the opening story, the collapse of society is mirrored by a fragmentation – a collapse – of language and meaning. Punctuation is inserted as words – “enough of that (full stop)” – “washed of sweat and blood (comma)” and the author leaves extra spaces between words mid-sentence.

Whether you find these techniques to be effective and arresting or a self-conscious writerly affectation is a matter of taste. At times, I found this formal disruption a distraction from the narrative (in stories where the narrative is often already quite nebulous.) It also somehow made me care less about the characters, perhaps because it made me more aware of the writer behind them. Is it artful, or too clever by half? At the end of Heartbreak at Super 8 there is a final paragraph of prose where it would seem the confused and desperate protagonist has shot himself. His fragmented first-person, present-tense account is followed by a few lines of free verse in his voice. Onwuemezi’s insertion of lines of poetry into the prose reminded me of the way Western film director Sam Peckinpah used slow-motion in the more violent scenes of his films to create a heightened, stylised effect.

There is little lightness or humour in these stories although I did laugh at this rather childlike exchange between characters, which could almost have been some lines from Waiting for Godot:

            “... ‘You’ve not travelled?’

            ‘I have, to some places I remember. To Moscow.’

            ‘Ah Moscow, never been, but I’ve been to Sorrow.’

            ‘A feeling.’

            ‘What?'

            ‘Sorrow is a feeling, not somewhere to go. Perhaps you meant Glasgow?’...”

As one who enjoys the short story form I’m pleased that Fitzcarraldo Editions have, with Dark Neighbourhood, embarked on publishing short story collections. But, too often in reading these stories, I had the impression Onwuemezi would have preferred to have been writing poetry, that she somehow didn’t trust prose fiction enough to create all the effects she wanted to achieve.

Dark Neighbourhood by Vanessa Onwuemezi is published on 6 October 2021 by Fitzcarraldo Editions.

Music in a world turned upside down

- Nettlebone, 100 mile house and Douglas MacGregor reviewed

Distracted by world events and global pandemics we could be forgiven for being too preoccupied over the past couple of two years to notice some fascinating albums that were quietly released into a world gone mad or, as one of the artists reviewed here put it, a world turned upside down. So, as a public service, here’s a little recap of what you might have missed...

Nettlebone’s Revel and Rhyme 

Revel and Rhyme is a serious-minded collection of original ballads in the English folk song tradition. The opening track 'World Turned Upside Down' makes it clear these are songs of dissent, calling for 'No kings, no queens, no lords above, no walls to come between us'. The sentiment of the lyrics remains uncannily topical in these times of post-Brexit Britain and a divided America, struggling to recover from Trump’s presidency.  

The album is the handiwork of brothers Dominic and Justin Forrest. Dominic provides a bedrock of Irish bouzouki, mandolin and guitar and the sound is greatly enriched by the addition of Jon Loomes' hurdy-gurdy, fiddle and viola and Jude Rees' distinctive flourishes of oboe, shawm, crumhorn, recorder and flute (which provide a pleasing early music feel.)

The Forrest brothers know their anti-establishment history: 'A Revel' celebrates Wat Tyler (leader of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381) and the radical priest John Ball; 'Anna Pink' concerns a renowned 18th-century merchant vessel while 'Towton' commemorates a decisive battle in the Wars of the Roses. It's all stirring stuff, but, while inequality and injustice persist, I think Nettlebone could allow themselves to sound even more outraged.

100 mile house’s Love and Leave You (on Fallen Tree Records)

As the title suggests 100 mile house's second album is all about relationships and loss. Love and Leave You is unflinching in its acknowledgment of life's inevitable sadnesses. The eleven songs cover themes including depression, parental alcoholism, difficulties starting a family, the breakdown of sibling relationships, the loss of a child and caring for a partner with dementia.

If all of this sounds rather too melancholic the album is also a celebration of human warmth and resilience. As the lyrics of 'Grateful' observe: 'If it wasn't for our darkness we wouldn't know what we're made of.' The moral of 'Like Each Day' - a beautifully-crafted family saga - is that, whatever life throws at us, we should live each day as if it's our last.

This oddly-named Anglo-Canadian duo (named after a town in British Columbia) are husband and wife Peter Stone and Denise MacKay. Stone's vocal delivery, always understated, is reminiscent of John Gorka and Leonard Cohen. With sympathetic, delicate touches of mandolin and violin, the songs' narratives are all the more emotionally powerful for their matter-of-fact restraint and uncluttered arrangements.

Douglas MacGregor’s Songs of Loss and Healing 

Finally, Songs of Loss and Healing. This is the third solo album by accomplished London-based classical guitarist Douglas MacGregor. A deeply personal project, it explores the connections between music, loss and healing - MacGregor experienced delayed grief, twenty-five years after the death of his mother to cancer when he was only seven.

The album is emotionally challenging - a musical journey through grief - so it's unsurprising that there are few strong melodic themes to hook us in; instead there are scattered, searching motifs and an emphasis on creating a mood evoking the confusion and uncertainty of loss. 'The Pathway' hovers between major and minor, as if battling not to stray into sadness. 'New Beginnings' starts tentatively, as if it dare not hope that grief can be resolved.

One of the most appealing tracks is the waltz 'Song for Lost Childhood', which reminded me of Freddie Phillips' music from 'Trumpton' and 'Camberwick Green' - TV delights of my own lost childhood.

Songs of Loss and Healing is an honest, brave project that celebrates the power of music in grief.  

Douglas also has an excellent website dedicated to exploring the power of music in grief: 
https://www.songsoflossandhealing.com/