Robin & Linda Williams: In the Company of Strangers (Sugar Hill)
This husband and wife duo is a wonderful antidote to those who feel they have overdosed on slick Nashville country. These 12 songs could have been recorded any time in the past 40 years, while the simple country/ folk/bluegrass arrangements stretch no frontiers. Yet Robin and Linda Williams's comfortable back porch melodies and poignant tales of life's vicissitudes are like striking black-and-white pictures set against country's garish colours. Linda Williams's voice has an appealing emotional range which contrasts well with her husband's rasping vocals. Surprisingly, 11 tracks are originals, albeit steeped in the styles of yesteryear. Songs such as The Hard Country and Bar Band in Hillbilly Heaven tap into their country past, while Woody Guthrie's influence is reflected in So Long See You Tomorrow. It is simple, honest music, probably heard to best effect in the small clubs and bars of backwoods America.
- Joe Breen
Memphis Slim: The Folkways years 1959-1973 (Smithsonian Folkways)
This is another in this important and fascinating series of reissues, paying homage to the music recorded on the legendary Folkways label by the blues pianist, Memphis Slim, so called because he stood 6'6" and hailed from Memphis, Tennessee, where he was born Peter Chapman on September 3rd, 1915. From the late 1920s he was one of the more important blues pianists, singing and playing in a variety of styles as the times dictated. These tracks, either solo or with accompanists such as Willie Dixon, showcase the rhythmic brilliance of his left hand and the inventiveness of his right. The music is so spirited that it remains vivid to this day. This is ironic because these tracks, recorded for a white audience, effectively meant that he had to return to the boogie-woogie style of playing he had left behind. Further details on the excellent sleeve notes.
- Joe Breen
Lia Luachra: Traffic (Malgamu Music)
This tradoid quartet has great power and delicacy, dreaming up great rooted swoons of complexity between Jon Hicks's guitar (and troubled, young-headed, folk-accented songs), Declan Corey's mandolin/bouzouki undergrowth, Shane Bracken's swathing concertina doing an accordionist/pipers's job, and Tricia Hutton's warming cello. There are heaps of original tunes, some in neat trad modes to spin the set-dancer's head, others climbing inside-out like Bracken's Borrowed Space, and even more pilfered from mates or the Greece repertoire. Recorded in Baginbun, the session energy could power the local grid, yet there's extraordinary exactitude on Hicks's title track, its moody mesh topped by a lonesome fiddle/mandolin melody.
- Mic Moroney