Norma Waterson: Bright Shiny Morning (Topic Records)
The Waterson-Carthy dynasty continue their prolific rescue-march through every corner of the English song repertoire with Norma's first purely trad solo album; the rich, mature gypsique voice floating over beautiful, lop-eared arrangements of songs like The Chaps of Cockaigny. Daughter Eliza produces, fiddles and sings; Martin Carthy drifts in guitar textures; Martin Green wheeze-pumps accordion; Julian Goodacre adds doublepipes; and the mix is often jewelled by Mary MacMaster's electroharp. There's quality Hovissy brass behind the title track, while dark emotions of love and poverty stream through Barbary Allen, Banks of the Dee, Flower of Sweet Strabane, etc. Just carving a few more penknife-notches into the scarred bark of the English heart.
Mic Moroney
Patrick Molard: (L'Oz Productions)
This Breton player of biniou, small-pipes and big highland pipes is rather beholden to Scots, Galician and indeed Irish piping, sharing Galician wedding tunes and an original jig/muineira with our own Mick O'Brien, or corkscrewing uileann pipes smartly inside a Bulgarian nationalist ballad. The electronic instruments and exotic percussion are gentle drones in the rich mix, while up top, there's a hysteric edge: Molard's revenge-dirge of Squinting Patrick from the classic Scots pibroch tradition; Yves Berthou's bombarde (a mediaeval oboe) fiddling dangerously with your head; Molard's highland pipes on a Herri Leon tune; let alone the atavistic headslam of Bulgarian singer Kalinka Vulcheva. A penetrating, anthematic chimaera of grooving overlays.
Mic Moroney