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Just a few weeks after celebrating her 17th birthday in December, Muireann Bradley performed a solo set on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. Hailing from County Donegal, she showcased her talent by singing the traditional blues song “Candyman,” popularized by gospel musician Reverend Gary Davis in the mid-20th century. With a charming southern US accent, Bradley skillfully played her guitar with playful dexterity. This song serves as the opening track on her debut album, which she was only able to create during the Covid-19 pandemic after her interest in combat sports was put on hold. Bradley gained recognition by posting videos of herself playing on YouTube, ultimately leading to a deal with the highly-regarded American folk and indie label, Tompkins Square.
Recorded in first or second takes, I Kept These Old Blues is unavoidably impressive. Bradley’s bright, limber vocals are clear and inviting, and when she leaps to higher intervals, there’s a thrill in hearing her land back in lower registers with acrobatic effortlessness. She plays around with high-pitched natural harmonics with similar ease, and they’re especially gorgeous in Police Dog Blues, as Bradley tells us: “All my life / I’ve been a travelling gal.”
In songs like Buck Dancer’s Choice, with its intricate rhythms and skillful use of string-bending, and the confident swagger of Vestapol, there is a sense of mechanical grace. It becomes difficult to ignore the fact that this is a high-quality imitation. However, when Bradley takes her style and voice to new heights – as she does with subtle hints of emotional depth in Delia (which was later covered by Bob Dylan on his 1993 album World Gone Wrong) – her potential for branching out in intriguing ways becomes apparent.
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Nick Hart and Tom Moore’s album, The Colour of Amber (released by Slow Worm Records), combines the deep, rich sounds of Hart’s viol da gamba (an instrument typically associated with Renaissance and Baroque music) and Moore’s viola with traditional songs from the morris and travelling communities. It offers a hearty, medieval sound that brings warmth to the cold winter months. Another album, Hirondelle (self-released), features the Brothers Gillespie, classical group Trio Mythos, and Provençal polyphonic trio Tant Que Li Siam, blending Occitan and northern English folk music in a unique and intriguing mix. The latter group showcases clever vocal arrangements and various percussion instruments, including sagattes, the zarb, and the daf, on standout tracks such as La Roumanço de Pèire d’Aragoun and Ô Ventour. Alula Down, a folk duo, released Sound Poems (available on Bandcamp), which is a captivating sound collage created through a community project with the Alzheimer’s Society Music and Memory Cafe. The album features samples of familiar songs like My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean and Hiraeth, alongside fragmented memories and industrial drone sounds.
Source: theguardian.com
