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Yesterday saw me managing to snag Anais Mitchell's "Child Ballads" for a steal on Amazon at $5. For any of y'all unfamiliar: Child Ballads is Mitchel and her collaborator--guitarist and sometime backup vocalist Jefferson Hamer--giving some old Scottish and English ballads a renaissance. The Child Ballads are 305 ballads from those countries, along with the American variants, Francis James took it in his head to anthologize, and honestly some of my fav folklore geekiness in their own right.
So realizing Mitchell and Hamer had picked seven of 'em and given them tunes akin to the American folk of someone like Jackson C. Frank delighted me. * We have uncountable Americans doing faux-Celtic stuff, complete with unspeakable attempts at accents. So to see her make something intensely North-American folk--there's a fair bit of Stan Rogers and other phenomenal Canadian musicians in there if you're watching for it--is so profoundly refreshing.
I've been listening to it a ton on Spotify till I could about quote lyrics when it occurred to me that it'd be well worth the investment to have it in my collection. As I've listened to the 7-song collection twice today, I'd say the investment's paying off.
I can't rec listening highly enough and buying if you can manage.
For a taste before you go off to Spotify, have Mitchell and Hamer performing my current favorite live:
* Frank's one of those obscure American folk artists I'll never get enough of. Career cut tragically short by poverty and mental illness, he's got this small but fucking gorgeously gutting body of work that's starting to come back into vogue. His Blues Run The Game is such a well-constructed masterclas in using music and writing to complement each other, with themes so haunting! I can only listen to it a few times a year.
So realizing Mitchell and Hamer had picked seven of 'em and given them tunes akin to the American folk of someone like Jackson C. Frank delighted me. * We have uncountable Americans doing faux-Celtic stuff, complete with unspeakable attempts at accents. So to see her make something intensely North-American folk--there's a fair bit of Stan Rogers and other phenomenal Canadian musicians in there if you're watching for it--is so profoundly refreshing.
I've been listening to it a ton on Spotify till I could about quote lyrics when it occurred to me that it'd be well worth the investment to have it in my collection. As I've listened to the 7-song collection twice today, I'd say the investment's paying off.
I can't rec listening highly enough and buying if you can manage.
For a taste before you go off to Spotify, have Mitchell and Hamer performing my current favorite live:
* Frank's one of those obscure American folk artists I'll never get enough of. Career cut tragically short by poverty and mental illness, he's got this small but fucking gorgeously gutting body of work that's starting to come back into vogue. His Blues Run The Game is such a well-constructed masterclas in using music and writing to complement each other, with themes so haunting! I can only listen to it a few times a year.
