Revenge of the Seth

I've never been cock-a-hoop about Lakeman, likable chap though he is.  This album has not changed that, but the last track is absolutely lovely, so seek that out.

SETH LAKEMAN – MAKE YOUR MARK (Honour Oak Records)

“The pandemic gave me a real determination to come out musically stronger and I really dug deep into myself for this album”, says Seth Lakeman. “Being able to record and play with the band again was really quite spiritual.” Whilst COVID isolation has inspired a thousand musical projects, from lofi experiments, to baroque electronic confections, to self-exploratory introspective musings, to songs about how weird it was when you couldn’t even go down the pub, Lakeman is seemingly one of the few musicians who has responded to the lockdown months with the philosophy, “hell, let’s just write some big tunes then play them with a kick-arse band”. This honesty and likeable simplicity reflects what’s best about Make Your Mark, as well as informing the less enticing elements. 

It’s a cliché to liken a musician’s work to their birthplace, but these sturdy songs sound as though they’re built to stand tall and resilient in a buffeting Devon wind. These tracks are big-boned and sinewy, bold tunes that stride stoically where other folk artists might soar ostentatiously or trip along pertly – which must have been a change for Benji Kirkpatrick, best known for playing in Bellowhead, officially the cheekiest folk wink-droppers of their generation.  Incidentally, Kirkpatrick’s performances on chiming mandolin and other stringed instruments have an elegant directness that’s as liable to bring to mind early 90s Peter Buck as Simon Mayor or your favourite folkie.  But if one were to pick this band’s star it might just be Alex Hart, who adds backing vocals that temper and sweeten Lakeman’s clamorous lead, as demonstrated by the drone-driven "Love Will Still Remain", where she’s soft and sinuous on the verses, and icily imperative on the choruses.

"Bound To Someone" has a heart-tugging melody that recalls Christy Moore in intimate mood, and its opening “his face was rough and rugged/ Wild as a stirring breeze/ Hard as the granite clifftop” is typical of the album’s thematic thread of humanity living with – or against – nature. Swaying ballad "The Lark" celebrates the natural world, whilst the atmospheric "Shoals To Turn" is more explicitly conservationist, and more than one listener will interpret the album’s opening salvo, “Did you hear the final warning?/ Too late, too loud”, as having an apocalyptically ecological tone. A high point comes with The Giant, which uses the language of high myth and folk balladry to tell the story of a beached whale, and a concerted effort to save it, whisked along with one of Lakeman’s trademark rousing fiddle melodies. At the end the song gets misty-eyed about the good that can be found in people, remembering that “There are those that detest and deprave/ But there on the edge of the wave-torn rocks/ There were those with the power to save”. 

Elsewhere, the album moves from wearing its heart on its sleeve, to ripping that sleeve off and waving it aloft behind the barricades. "Side By Side" and "Underground" are both blood-stirring clarions, and if they lack a little subtlety, the energy is infectious. But the title track is an extended riff on Rakim’s claim that “it ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at”, which has the platitudinous feel of a hastily composed graduation speech, and the single "Higher We Aspire" is just a collection of somewhat tired saws. Top tip: your album should never have more than two lyrics that could be published on Facebook under a picture of a tai chi master silhouetted on a beach at sunset. The music can also sometimes tip into the banal, exhibiting the clumpy preachiness of worthy ‘80s rock - it’s not too hard to draw a line between "Side By Side" and John Farnham’s "You're The Voice"!

However, closing track "Constantly" dispels any such concerns. It’s a long and mournful night breeze of a song, promising that the narrator will continue to exist in streams, frosts and lonely hills. It may be a message from a departed loved one, a continuation of the naturalist theme, or the most beautiful adaptation of Ecclesiastes’ line “all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again” in two and half thousand years.

Cornbury 2010 Sunday Pt 2

The infamous Cornbury rain kept off for the festival, and the feeble little drizzle that did start evaporated in the face of Raghu Dixit’s whirlwind of bouncy positivity. T shirts describe it as “Indo-World folk rock”, and whilst we’re not sure “Indo-World” makes any more sense than “Anglo-Oxonian”, the “folk” bit is fair enough, and the “rock” bit is beyond discussion. Dixit’s voice is keening and powerful enough to knock you back on your seat even as the funky fusion rhythms make you want to get up and dance as though David Gray were a distant memory. The band is fantastic, varying the tone with fizzing violin, snaky bass and Dire Straits guitar. At one point they sound like a carnatic Levellers, and at another they build up a chunky rhythm like a Bollywood Los Lobos, but at the heart of the music is a warmth and exuberance you won’t often find. Normally when we describe an act as “a good festival band” it’s a back-handed compliment, for Raghu Dixit it’s a golden commendation. Simply joyous.

Were we implying earlier that sound engineers are childish? Well, here’s Flash Harry PA mainman and outstanding engineer Tony Jezzard with Reservoir Cats who definitely aren’t children: they play proper grown up blues with big boys’ growly-wowly vocals, clever twiddly-widdly guitar solos and sophisticated lyrics about women with whom they might have had sexy-wexy. Genre assassination aside, they’re actually a good group, having plenty of fun onstage, boasting a reliably sturdy rhythm section and, God help us, some of those wailing guitar solos sound pretty decent. Plus we know that nothing we say will change this band one fraction, and that in itself is worthy of respect.

Folk: is it music by the people, music about the people, or music for the people? For Oxford Folk Festival star booking Seth Lakeman you have to feel it’s the latter two definitions that count, as he is keen to ground each song in real events in his introductions, often celebrating people otherwise off history’s radar, and because his music has a simple, easily apprehended structure. Forthcoming album title track “Hearts And Minds” is a crowd rousing song, but in the sense of “Let’s all believe the same thing”, rather than “Let’s get some cudgels and duff up the ruling classes”. It’s a performance of egalitarian, humanitarian music, spiced with his fluid fiddle playing and outstanding double bass. It wasn’t our favourite show of the weekend, but it did demonstrate that there is plenty of excitement to be found in mainstream music, and that Cornbury’s conservative roster can provide all the elation, surprise and fun as experimental or obscure music. It also reminded us that no music is more boring and enraging as music that is professionally boring and unadventurously enraging, so we’re not complete converts to the Cornbury ethos just yet.