Review: Stirrings

This lot are surely the best new band to arrive in a considerably long time, brilliantly and with perfect taste applying pop syncopations to traditional styles; quite incredible in performance, of pretty well virtuoso ability and mature well ahead of their ages. They sound like the new thing; a great combination using sometimes novel technique and endlessly inventive variety. Thoroughly uplifting, evocative music with an appeal across the board.

I had this debut CD jabbed at me by the outfit's fiddler/vocalist after their outstanding gig at the Rockingham Arms on the eve of Mayday (helped by great sound from Rob Shaw), which gave me barely time to more than dash off a quick impression to get in this issue.

For the uninitiated, Anna Esslemont (fiddle, vocal), Ben Hellings (guitar) and Cormac Byrne (bodhran, various drums) are the Welsh/English/Irish threesome who possess this year's BBC Young Tradition award. This is their debut CD, recorded in these parts -- chez Rusby -- and titled, appropriately for a band named Water Water (if you translate the two varieties of Gaelic): Everywhere. As indeed they are.

Stark staccato guitar chords and strange bodhran sounds intro, before a wildly zippy fiddle launches through the roof. Segue through a refreshing ethereal interlude to something more normally frenetic. That's the first set: Feathers. Then a more sultry tune about getting a massage at the Cambridge Folk Festival (Judy's Hands) gives way to a cheeky upward stepwise motif on fiddle that takes on a blistering backing. A splendid collage of musical ideas to keep your interest (A-part Before The Swing).

Anna's extremely pleasing mellifluous voice takes a syncopated tune by Ben, backed with Cormac's brushed drums (Mr and Mrs). No folk affectations but natural.

So back to the sets: The Mouseskin Shoe comes from Nollaig Casey and goes at a fair lick, but outdone for sheer melodic pace by what it slides into, followed by the disconcertingly titled, The Hangover Poo. Pushing the boat out with novel sounds on bodhran to staccato violin opens a reading of Michael McGoldrick's tune, Waterman's. Heavy rhythm stops on guitar complement the fluid fiddle.
Sandra Kerr's song, No Going Back, starts unaccompanied before a striking arrangement, syncopated of course, of guitar and one of those African drums you hold between your legs. A delicate touch of sparing vocal vibrato, delicious held and slid notes. Very well sung. Works a treat.

The highlight of the three-tune set title track is the trad Yiddish Tune, sounding as authentic but musically sophisticated as a Bartok reworking of one of his field recordings. The delightfully twisting and ever so slightly unsettling Parry Hotter presages Anna's celebration of quitting tedium at her local store: My Time Is Mine bursts into a feeling of freedom and features the tightest of tight recurring musical pause and burst.

Lovely fast flailed high barre chords and a repeated pause at the very top before a blistering snatch of a run creates a loop-the-loop of music to follow a perfect evocation of gliding: All About Flying indeed; while Mind the Gap sports fiendish flailing and more super abrupt guitar rhythm stops; more extraordinary noises out of the bodhran.

A song to finish: an Anna and Ben co-write. Anna uses a beautiful pop styled smoothness to slip enchantingly around the notes. Just voice and guitar before brushed drums and fiddle fill out an arrangement redolent of the whimsical best of London New Acoustic outfit, Miro.

If this album doesn't revive you and put you in a good mood then few things will. It captures well how they are in performance. A must-buy from a band that is a must-see.

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