Reviews

Mor Karbasi

Recently featured in our March issue, she was an intriguing discovery of last year through MySpace. Now this mesmerising debut album deserves to give London-based Israeli singer Mor Karbasi one of the world music hits of 2008.

Karbasi has an incredibly flexible voice, made the more impressive by the fact that she sings in quite a high range. She’s able to effortlessly switch from a breathy intimacy to that hard edged, intense open throated style that first hooked us on Bulgarian singers – particularly on the astonishing traditional Ladino Mansevo Del Dor (I Am A Modern Young Man) – pulling you deep into songs, taking the senses and emotions on an addictive roller coaster.

That would be enough, but equally masterful are the subtle arrangements and production by her partner, guitarist Joe Taylor, and Matt Howe. There’s a lot going on in some tracks – multiple acoustic and electric guitars, oud, mandolin, bass and more from Taylor himself, plus an international cast – European, Indian, Middle Eastern – of noted players of strings, percussion, woodwinds, and harmonium and harpsichord from Mor herself. It would have been very easy for this to have ended up as overblown and pompous, swamping the songs, but the opposite is the case: subtlety, texture, taste (but not the held-back variety), always supporting, surrounding and lifting the voice and the songs, keeping them central. Every listen reveals new details, makes a different song jump out (like, on this listen, the almost Mexican Komo El Pasharo Ke Bola).

And then add a wonderful set of lyric translations, interwoven with a great story by her mother, Shoshana Karbasi, all in a beautiful little eco-friendly (no plastic!) digipak. Everything about this album murmurs quality, attention to detail, so I’m almost embarrassed to mention that the track sequence doesn’t match the cover. Let’s put it down to the Persian carpet principle (real craftsmen would always put one mistake into the pattern, as perfection would be challenging God!).

With Yasmin Levy’s recent superb form in the Ladino field, maybe these two complementary, different but equally talented singers will spark some kind of genre boom as brand leaders. As they say, one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but the coincidence of these two songbirds hints at heatwave.

www.mintakamusic.com; distributed by New Note.

Lissa Schneckenburger

Britain doesn’t have the exclusive on a new generation of fiddle singers and this album by New England based Schneckenburger is pure joy. Her fiddle playing is attractively fluid, her singing gently persuasive, the arrangements thoughtful and intelligently presented and the choice of material, in particular, is arresting. The first of two linked albums designed to reintroduce largely forgotten New England music into our lives (Dances is due out next year), it goes far beyond academic exercise.

There’s a bright and breezy Fair Maid By The Sea Shore for openers, an intimate telling of Young Charlotte, an effectively brooding treatment of The Old Beggar Men, a seriously moving string arrangement of The Drowsy Sleeper (including Natalie Haas on cello) and a frisky Americanised version of one of the greatest ballads of them all, Little Musgrove And Lady Barnswell, which climaxes in a thrilling blitz of fiddle, banjo (Dave Cory) and accordeon (Sharon Shannon). Litter it with a bunch of lively tunes played by an array of classy musicians – Shannon has a key role throughout – and you have a cracking album with the rare distinction of proudly displaying discernible roots in the American tradition on a bunch of songs of primarily British origin, but which still sounds thoroughly contemporary.

The way she plucks the strings on the slightly spooky Lovely Jamie creates an uncanny parallel with Lisa Knapp’s already distinctively sparse style of delivery and is a powerful solo diversion to the band tracks. The only real question mark hangs over Harmony, an 18th century Isaac Watts hymn. She sings it beautifully with some delicate backing vocals, and the unusual tune and arrangement might work if not dragged down by some heavy-handed drums, which make it sound more like an invitation to war than a call of religious unity. That apart, it’s a blinder.

www.lissafiddle.com

When Bob Dylan was given his own series of weekly hour-long programmes on American radio, each containing songs based around a certain theme, even the most blinkered worshipper of His Bobness might not have anticipated quite how engaging a DJ he would be, or the treasures mined as he and his researchers used conveniently generic topics as a mechanism to cherry pick American popular music’s rich heritage (‘weather’, ‘mother’ and ‘drinking’ were the initial subjects of the 50-episode first series).

The show is akin to tuning in to an iPod shuffle of Bob’s musical memories, a fragmented succession of aural snapshots as he might have encountered them over the airwaves, filtered largely on the blues and country music radio stations of his youth and laced with a more than liberal smattering of gospel, soul, reggae, pop, jazz, conjunto and rock music from the ‘20s to the present day.

All of which has been expertly sampled, deftly sequenced and rolled up into a knowledgeably annotated two-CD package by Theme Time producer Eddie Gorodetsky, Dylan’s manager Jeff Rosen and Ace records’ Roger Armstrong. Bookending the collection with songs that extol contrasting virtues of the wonderful world of radio (as religious conduit on Grandpa Jones’s ‘40s country hit Turn Your Radio On, as urban automobile jukebox on Jonathan Richman’s loose-limbed classic Roadrunner from 1976), the compilers weave together a tapestry of venerated artists (from Billie to Bo Diddley and beyond) and unheralded gems (including a treat for lovers of the recent Krauss/ Plant album by Li’l Millet and His Creoles), with the odd foray away from the USA (the militaristic, scattergun roll of The Clash’s searing Tommy Gun, Celtic Cajun Geraint Watkins at his bluesy best, some soulful ska from Jamaica) dovetailing into the broad theme of succinctly delivered, timeless nuggets of everyday American life.

The only obvious difference from the shows themselves (apart from an absence of hip-hop tracks; not something that will overly concern the typical fRoots reader, one would venture) is the absence of Bob’s dry, laconic delivery. No corny jokes punctuate the tunes here, no surreal, rasping diversions into his meandering thought processes, no homespun wisdom or comic erudition. Just 50 prime tracks from one of the choicest radio shows of recent times.

www.acerecords.com

Ghost Bees

“Last evening I fell for a vampire…” – and you yourself are as likely to fall for Ghost Bees’ unique brand of spooky-folk when you’re sucked in by that opening gambit, compellingly vocalised in eerily shifting girl-sibling harmony after a minor-key prelude of gently plucked rhythmic mandolin, guitar, droning viola, glissando violin and t(w)inkling glockenspiel, the imagery dancing into your ears in queasily appealing waltz-time. It’s a strange but aggressively beautiful, and often melancholy, sound-world (reminiscent of the weirder experiments of the ISB, Fit & Limo or Kate Bush), which spills over into, nay fairly characterises, the rest of this teasingly brief (35-minute) yet highly treasurable disc from “twin telepaths” Romy and Sari Lightman who hail from Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The seven songs making up their debut offering are as tales told by a two-headed balladeer, replete with distinctly whimsical, occasionally overwrought but intensely evocative language, recounting or reflecting on matters of fantasy and ancestral nostalgia. Literacy is a byword, and the esoteric album title denotes the practice of tea-leaf reading! Indeed, the art of divination will, I suspect, also stand you in good stead with the duo’s chimerical lyrics, which address the bleak and frightening in our lives (for instance, the experience of birth in Sinai, infanticide in the malevolent Goethe-gothic of Erlking and the terror of the Pol Pot regime in Tear Tassle Ogre Heart).

Sometimes enigmatic, but invariably enthralling listening; I’m still not sure what it all adds up to, even after several plays, but I’m downright enchanted and sufficiently intrigued to persist and listen again – and closely. I’m sure Ghost Bees have chosen their name carefully, for their music creates somewhat of a spectral buzz for sure – an insistent thrumming ambience that just won’t go away: and genuinely scary!

www.myspace.com/ghostbees, www.youthclub.ca

3 Daft Monkeys: Social Vertigo (own 3DM6)
On paper it sounds bonkers, an acoustic trio who pile everything, Old Uncle Cobbleigh and all style, into an acoustic roots soup. In reality 3DM are out to entertain and provoke a reaction, they are hopelessly maverick, a proud blast of theatrical hullabaloo. All this and an undeniably home grown sentiment. Daft but decent. www.3daftmonkeys.co.uk

Tony O’Leary: Pump The Box (Own label 0207 635)
Even if one were to sit down and plan the worst album in the world, it would be difficult to imagine such a cloyingly awful pile of detritus as this heap of ‘Oirish’ schlock from Newfoundland which features some of the most hackneyed tunes from the Irish canon, atrociously banal song arrangements, and appallingly bad musicianship.

Raquel Tavares

Raquel Tavares: Raquel Tavares (Movieplay Mov 30.579)
Yet another protégé of fado song writer/ producer Jorge Fernando, this young singer made a slightly shaky UK debut at last year’s Atlantic Waves Festival in London. She’s more impressive on CD, as this confident disc of new and traditional-style material shows, showcasing a lovely Mariza-ish voice in simple acoustic settings. Nothing too innovative but it’s early days yet. www.myspace.com/raqueltavares

The Dhol Foundation: Drums & Roses (TDF TDF0701)
This second release from the UK’s premier Asian drum troupe is a real kitchen sink affair: a big production that throws bhangra, Celtic, trip-hop, rock and Bollywood influences into the mix. Sprawling, hit and miss, but on balance worth a listen. www.dholfoundation.com