ON OUR NEXT MEETING FULL
Instead the arrangements are full of space, full of sympathetic ensemble playing. Despite the obvious individual talents of the players, we are never assailed by overbearing virtuosity. The story has a moral, and the moral appears to be this: if a horse-eating ghost comes to your castle at night, make sure you go to bed with her.īut it is the musicianship on At Our Next Meeting that really elevates it above standard traditional fare. The clarity of Portman’s vocal performance on King Henry is a disquieting counterpoint to a supernatural tale of mass animal slaughter and necrophilia, with a curiously happy ending. Wild and Wicked Youth is a fairly familiar song, a kind of highwayman’s anthem from beyond the grave, but with Roberts singing the second vocal it seems to take on a beguiling moral murkiness. Their roomy, sometimes improvisational interplay creates new and exciting landscapes for timeworn ballads. It is immediately apparent that the Collective are entirely comfortable in each other’s musical and lyrical company. These kinds of narrative songs represent intriguing, often universal takes on oral histories, and so are meant to be shared, expanded and reinterpreted.
The Furrow Collective consists of Rachel Newton, Lucy Farrell, Emily Portman and Alasdair Roberts, four artists already well known to each other and well respected throughout the folk music community.
This in turn makes us think of age and wisdom, and as such it is a fitting name for a group of musicians who have assembled a collection of songs full of ancient truths and sagacity. As well as its obvious topological and agricultural connotations, ‘furrow’ can also refer to a deep wrinkle of skin, particularly on the forehead.
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