Review: Help please - fRoots

Subject: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: Anne Lister
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 05:02 AM

I hear that there's a good review in fRoots of my recent CD. Can't get to a suitable newsagent for the next few days, unfortunately, and fRoots haven't sent me a tearsheet copy (or if they have, it hasn't come in today's post) so I'd be very grateful if anyone who has a copy of this month's issue could send me a copy of the review in question!
Thanks in advance ...

Anne (Lister)

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: Peace
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 05:05 AM

Congratulations, Anne. You/the CD deserve it.

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: Anne Lister
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 05:30 AM

Thanks, Bruce - I'm really curious as to what the review says!

Anne

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: johnadams
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 05:49 AM

Sent! - to annelister.com

Let me know if it doesn't work. It's a compressed pdf but I can resend as other formats.

J

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 06:19 AM

It's in the May issue which I don't think hits the streets till next week some time. It's by Dave Kidman and is quite long:

Anne's 8th solo album forms another enchanting chapter in her personal storybook, carrying on her own well-established tradition of crafted singer-songwriterdom. Anne's stock-in-trade remains ever-fascinating tales sourced from true stories or folk myths / legends; additionally this time, four of her own songs are drawn directly from experiences recounted to Anne during story-telling workshops which she ran in prisons. Compelling accounts of supernatural occurrences and beings co-exist with the poignant story of Irving Pollard of Coventry and the telling examination of issues such as suicide, drug addiction and incarceration.

Although couched in her now familiar beautifully melodious compositional idiom, the new songs comprise probably Anne's most varied set to date purely in terms of subject matter and inspiration, while at the same time the simple yet intense poetry of her writing has seldom been more captivating. Hers has always been a strongly individual artistic voice although the astute may well sense, particularly in the compassion of her philosophical stance, a kinship with the work of Leon Rosselson, Maggie Holland and even Ralph McTell. Musically, Anne's skilled at reworking the forms, patterns and resonance of traditional song: several of the new songs contain more than subliminal echoes of time-honoured melodic contours - The Horseman Ceunant Y Cyffdy recalls The Prickly Bush and White Powder recalls When I Was On Horseback while the charming opener Little Polly Williams trips lightly to a courtly variant of Speed The Plough.

Finally, How To Stand Still and Stone Circles are revisits of songs that originally graced the lovely 1987 Anonyma LP Burnt Feathers, surely a candidate for reissue), and it says much for the consistency of Anne's writing that they stand up so well today. On each track (save for the a cappella White Powder), she employs up to three accompanying musicians, hand-picked from the pool of Mike O'Connor (fiddle, concertina), Matt Crum (keyboards, saxes, melodeon), Jo Freya (clarinet, harmonies), Jacey Bedford (harmonies) and multi-skilled long-term collaborator Steafan Hannigan; the album's sympathetically produced by Brian Bedford. Once again, Anne's weaved a brilliant tapestry of insightful and atmospheric songs.

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: Hamish
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 06:37 AM

And on the front cover is my mate Ian King who played a storming gig at The 12-Bar Club on Thursday, and is at Cecil Sharpe House next week with his six-piece band. Here area couple of YouTubes from the 12-Bar:
Umm...
Death and the Maiden
Adieu to Old England

~8^)

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: Anne Lister
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 06:57 AM

Thank you so much, Diane and John - amazingly quick response from both of you!

Anne

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: MoorleyMan
Date: 18 Apr 09 - 08:24 AM

You just beat me to it, as I'd just typed, cut-and-pasted it ready to post on the thread!!!
It's good to see Anne getting some richly deserved recognition in a high-profile publication - and commendably soon after the disc's release too.
MM

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: Peace
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 04:38 AM

Darned right, MM. She did a wonderful CD and it's great she is getting recognition for it. It is beautiful.

Anne, once again, congratulations from me, too. Way to go, gal.

BM

Subject: RE: Review: Help please - fRoots
From: Anne Lister
Date: 19 Apr 09 - 05:55 AM

*blush*
Thank you, chaps ...much appreciated!

Anne