Chris Wood - Trespasser
Beautiful, political modern folk with its feet rooted in the past.
This was a birthday present from Mr. Bsag, and I think it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in a while. I loved his The Lark Descending (which was a present from Mr. Bsag two years ago), and I think Trespasser is probably even better. As the title implies, the theme of the album is enclosure, ownership and exclusion. He provides a wonderful mini-essay in the sleeve notes about what he sees as the ongoing effects of the enclosure of common land in England into the present day. He links that very deftly to the current depredations of ‘developers’, rampant materialism and the gentrification of rural areas. He’s a very modern folk musician, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard another songwriter make ancient folk songs sound so topical and contemporary at the same time as making modern folk songs which give you the sense of the deep roots of socio-political problems. It’s not often you hear the words “plasma screen” or “four-by-four” in a folk song, but it sits very comfortably.
That probably makes his music sound very worthy and dreary, but it’s absolutely beautiful, moving and stirring. He has a way of putting together words and music that can make you laugh, the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, and tears come to your eyes, all in the space of a few lines. The stories he weaves are utterly gripping. In ‘The Cottager’s Reply’ an elderly Cotswold cottage owner talks to the rich young couple who want to pay him half a million pounds for his home. It’s so quiet, gentle and dignified, and yet underscored by deep anger. When the cottager tells the couple that he can get to London in four hours, but in their four-by-four they will probably do it in three, he draws out the ‘f’s to extraordinary lengths. It’s angry swearing without actually saying the words, and perfectly in keeping with the voice of the old man whose story he is telling.
‘England in Ribbons’ is a mummers tale made relevant to modern conflicts (no prizes for guessing who ‘Brave St. George’ is), and yet it has such ancient, layered resonances that it instantly makes you feel that the Tudor period was mere heartbeats ago. I also love ‘The Lady of York’. It’s a traditional song about a woman secretly abandoning her babies, and in the notes, Chris Wood says that it is usually known as ‘The Cruel Mother’, which he doesn’t see at all. In anyone else’s hands, it would be about a cruel mother, but he has such tenderness, humanity and understanding of the difficult situations that people face that it becomes an incredibly sad song about somebody with no choices and a broken heart. Chris Wood has a history of making me cry (the last time was when I was on a train), and this album was no exception.
Finally, I have to mention ‘Come Down Jehovah’. Presumably working on the principle that the Church should not have all the best tunes, he wrote an atheist hymn. A passionate entreaty to enjoy paradise on earth rather than hoping for the hereafter, it has exactly the same sentiments expressed by Philip Pullman in His Dark Materials. He tells the Devil to come up from Hell, because humans are perfectly able to create evil and suffering on their own, and we should acknowledge that. It’s a joyful, gentle song though and a hymn I’d be very proud to adopt.
Good job we're not all the same!…
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Like Lark Descending, I’ll buy this one too. Thanks for the tip. I love his music.
by Lighty @ 01/04/2008 11:01 pm • Permalink
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