There were three reasons why I really didn't want to review this album. Firstly the recent Trollfest album excepted, my often voiced opinion that most Folk Metal has gone the way of Goth Metal into cookie cutter formula. Secondly that everything about this solo album for Skyclad's singer simply screams an intensely personal and emotional project which is a terrible thing to face if it turns out to be something you don't like very much. And thirdly if it's done right then it usually hits me hard. Very hard. From Levellers through New Model Army to Jethro Tull and Skyclad themselves I have history with Folk rock, folk metal, folk.
Anyway, I parted journeys with Skyclad after The Answering Machine and never looked back so I have never heard Kevin Ridley's voice. This, therefore, was all pretty new to me and I clung to that aspect of the new and plunged in.
After the opening interlude of crackly recorded singing, we are greeted by 'Eat The Sun' and I am back in familiar lands. There is no metal here; this is folk rock of the type and the quality of Levellers or The Men They Couldn't Hang in less rowdy moments with the essential bitter sweet observation of Roy Harper even and not a million miles from where I expected Skyclad to be now. Very English and contemporary, evocative and wryly eccentric. Ridley's voice is a nicely balanced instrument; human enough to live the words and tuneful enough to carry the softest moments. All beautifully played by the ensemble cast and, as you'd expect, with a spot on production.
That amusing opener though is the perfect feint and the sucker punch of 'An Angel In Harlow Green' just about floors me. This is what used to hit home with all those bands I mentioned; a simple sweet melody that dips deep into an emotional reservoir, while the lyrics find personal resonance in landmarks, in this case The Angel of the North. And the follow up ' De Profundis (Back Home Again)' just about kills me. It has a haunting lost fiddle melody and light acoustic guitar jangle and wistful pipe softly dancing around memories of home and lost years so redolent of Levellers at their finest. I have to go back and listen to it again despite being so choked I can't speak.
As I said, when it's good this stuff gets me where I live. Worries one and two out of the window then....
This is predominantly an album based in memories and times of the NE. Small and to many probably inconsequential events litter this album but they are the kind of things that make people who they are. 'Point Of Departure' is the quiet wistful moment you face leaving, '(We All Get) Where We Want To Go' a bitter Skyclad jig of an observation on matrimony, 'Still Lucid After All These Beers' concerned observations on a Saturday night with the bite of the best. A history lesson about the people in the infectious 'They Dance Till Tomorrow' and a singular one in 'Good intentions'.
Imperfections? Well 'Lost For Words' I find a little bit of a dreary closer but perhaps it's simply one song I can't penetrate.
For me the Folk in too much Metal has lost it's way and been consigned to drunken festival afternoons. All well and good, and there's no problem with good hedonistic fun but it should also be so much more. You see folk music is about, well, folk. Its not cable knit sweaters and fingers in ears, dead people from books and carpenters making looms. It was the newspaper and internet of the past and still a clear voice in the present (just look at Billy Bragg for topical example). It's wars in Afghanistan from every side, it's grimy city centres and public sculptures, it's your mate who got hooked and your partner who saved you and your mates you meet on Saturdays and the bus journey home every day and your packed lunch tasting dull. It's life, guys and Kevin Ridley and co. know this and deliver a damned fine album.
Sing it.
http://www.myspace.com/kevinridleyofficial
http://kevinridley.groovemachine.net
Gizmo
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