PROGRESSIVE FOLK

PAUL SEXTON scours the new releases to find there’s nowt so prog as folk.

Damien Jurado has two decades of uncompromising roots manoeuvres in his resumé, often writing songs of haunted elegance, of which one remembers 1999’s Rehearsals For Departure album as a prime example. The Seattle-born observer’s April release In The Shape Of A Bird (Loose) is the latest entry, an acoustic excursion into some elegant shadows. To paraphrase Jurado himself, no one is better at a slightly menacing waltz.

Out since late last year, but well worth a nod for its sound and its unlikely creative double act, is Hjalte Ross’ debut set Embody (Wouldn’t Waste). Young Hjalte recorded it at his home in the rural north of Denmark with storied British producer John Wood. For anyone that knows the latter’s credentials on key records by Fairport Convention, John Martyn and other acoustic royalty from Denny to Drake, that’s recommendation enough. Wood lends a lifetime of experience to an elegantly muted set of reflections enhanced at times by subdued strings.

Another 2018 catch-up is The Temporary, by Shetland quartet Trookers, on their own label. Chocka with hooks and twists, it kneads a mixture of folk and stripped-back modern rock moods into a sound of its own, resetting our lazy assumptions that Shetland is all about wool and violins.

Hattie Whitehead, the singer-writer from Richmond in London, wears her heart and her accomplished song craft on her sleeve with the self-released single More Than That. It’s an appealingly open-faced love song from her second EP Old Soul. Meanwhile, the troubadour spirit of Ireland’s Dean Maywood walks a stylish line between folk and Americana on Jane, another self-released single from an EP project due in May.

William Tyler’s Goes West (Merge) is a richly-woven instrumental tapestry of his odyssey from Nashville to California. It’s smart, filmic modern folk with acoustic guitar threads and occasional echoes of Mark Knopfler’s folkiest endeavours.

Lastly to a much-missed and still sadly undervalued master, with two reissues from the catalogue of the late, talismanic acoustic guitarist Davy Graham. For some reason, this true innovator doesn’t always make it into the same breath as fellow frontiersmen like Messrs Jansch and Carthy. But acoustic guitarists in the know recognise Graham’s DADGAD tuning as the technique that influenced those and other greats such as Jimmy Page. Two period gems, 1966’s Midnight Man and 1969’s Hat, now live again via Bread and Wine/East Central One, and they’re little short of essential. Both LPs show his aptitude for blues standards, such as Stormy Monday on the first and Hoochie Coochie Man on the second, and each has him reinhabiting thennewish Beatles tunes, I’m Lookin’ Thru’ You and Getting Better. A little better all the time, in fact.