The typical reaction to Kate Rusby is people coming up to her, after a gig and/or in the street, and saying "I hate folk music but I really like your work". The 21-year-old Barnsley singer, whose magnificent Sleepless album is one of the favourites to scoop the Mercury Music Prize next month, doesn't mind the back-handed compliment. But although she is as keen as the next person to drag folk away from its "finger-in-the-ear/ songs about dead sailors" image, she remains very much true to the folk tradition. While other new faces in the folk movement, such as Eliza Carthy, have sought to mix folk with dribs and drabs of drum'n'bass (handy tip: don't), Rusby is a bit of a purist at heart. Since her Mercury nomination, and the increase in records sales and media exposure that followed it, much has been made of the "folk renaissance", but it was always there lingering away at the back of the record shop, only occasionally popping its head up courtesy of a mainstream-embracing Norma Waterson or June Tabor album.
Rusby must seem like a PR dream for the folkies: young, bright and funny with an endearing Barnsley accent and turn of phrase. Her parents had their own ceili band, and Kate grew up listening to Nic Jones while her mates were listening to Bon Jovi. A chance meeting with fellow singer Kathryn Roberts led to an album that was voted the Folk Roots Album of the Year in 1995, and for a while the duo seemed set for bigger things - but, fearful of having to do Top Of The Pops and negotiate with rapacious major labels, Kate soon returned to Barnsley to keep the music "real".
Her first solo album, Hourglass (on the tiny folk indie label, Pure Records), shifted a lot more units than it was supposed to, and made inroads into the American market; but it wasn't until Sleepless, earlier this year, that people in Britain and Ireland latched on to her. "With Sleepless, I think people were expecting me to come out with some big over-produced thing with bass and drums, but that's not what I want to do. The new stuff is more mature, sure, but there's no way I'm going to commercialise the music."
One of the many joys of this album is the fact that it could have been recorded any time over the last few decades. There is absolutely no watering down of the tradition and no attempt to fiddle around with contemporary sounds or use samplers, etc - the way a major label folk artist might be forced to do. Most the songs are "trad.arr", but even the songs she writes herself, such as Sweet Bride, sound as trad as they come. "A lady was walking on a midsummer day, the birds were whistling so merry and gay, when along came a white steed in the finest array, and it carried a young man these words he did say," goes the first verse. With stand-out tracks like Sho Heen (self-composed) and The Wild Goose (trad.arr), placed alongside an amazing cover version of an amazing song - Iris Dement's Our Town - this is a beguiling affair.
Sleepless is on Pure Records.
With the whole tribute band thing coming to a bit of a standstill, the new trend is simply a variation on a theme. The idea is to keep the "tribute" ethos intact, but somehow jazz it up a bit with something different. With this is mind, please welcome the double-tribute band, Gabba. Their party trick is to play Abba songs the way The Ramones would have played them. And, yes, they do have a clever name, don't they. Coming to a Midnight at The Olympia near you soon - if any promoters out there have any sense. As always, readers' suggestions for the names of other such "double-tribute" bands are not welcome . . . And "P" is for Part: you really wouldn't want to be missing an evening of contemporary composer Arvo Part's music being played tonight in the Meeting House Square, Temple Bar (and it's free in). Called A is for Arvo, we very much recommend.
