PROGRESSIVE FOLK

PAUL SEXTON takes in tablas, harps and a dulcitar amid the prog folk flavours.

Writer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Duncan Lyall’s exemplary resumé includes recent work with Mark Knopfler on the music for the delayed stage adaptation of Local Hero. He’s also collaborated with Craig Armstrong and toured with Mary Chapin Carpenter, and has had a firm foothold in traditional folk territory as a double bassist with Kate Rusby and celtic “supergroup” Treacherous Orchestra. But his notable new album, Milestone (Red Deer), is a showcase for his nimble mastery of the Moog, which takes the role of the bass and assumes some lead melody lines too. They intertwine splendidly with strings, woodwinds and electric guitar on such evocative instrumental pleasures as Barnacarry Bay.

A format-fusing delight.

Langan, Frost & Wane may sound like they’re going to deliver a leaflet about selling your house for you, but they inhabit a different sort of estate on their self-titled album, released on Goldstar Recordings. The set juxtaposes Eastern mysticism with the Western folk rock tradition, with attractive guitar textures, hypnotic percussion, otherworldly lyricism (Learn The Name of the Plants, Alchemist Of Hazy Row) and ethereal echoes of the Strawbs via Donovan to George Harrison at his most Ravi Shankar-inspired. Strings, tablas and the sitar (actually a Peavey, tech fans) abound.

Singer-songwriter Leah Sohotra, originally from Vermont but based this past decade in Blarney, Country Cork, directs my attention to her single The Shark (1720583 Records). It’s from her debut album of 2019, Breaded Crickets, available on Bandcamp, and its enigmatic shifts in gear move between a strumming stomp and pretty harp and string-laden interludes. Single and album are decorated by her unusual, gospel-Americana tones, reminiscent of that genre’s Rhiannon Giddens.

Historical documents arrive in the form of new reissues by Iain Matthews and by C.O.B. In 1971, those initials stood for Clive’s Original Band, formed around Incredible String Band co-founder and instrumentalist Clive Palmer and folk artisans Mick Bennett and John Bidwell. Quitting the ISB after their first LP, Palmer disappeared to India but returned to make the 1971 record Spirit Of Love, stoically produced in challenging conditions by Ralph McTell. It reemerges on Bread and Wine/East Central One, with McTell’s original notes and his contemporary postscript. Palmer and Bennett both sing and Bidwell plays his custom made dulcitar on an album revered as definitive folk by Johnny Marr, no less. As McTell says, its unworldly charm speaks of “a more innocent, mystic and optimistic time”.

Live At The Bonington Theatre, Nottingham 1991 (Angel Air) documents Matthews’ performance with his former Plainsong colleague Andy Roberts. It’s an admirable memento of an intimate reunion that reignited a creative partnership that has continued ever since, with Iain’s original songs augmented by a cover of Danny Whitten’s I Don’t Want

To Talk About It.