Folk Songs

James Yorkston used to be in a punk band. Although if he has carried over any influences from his days as Huckleberry’s bassist he hides it well. Apparently harbouring no desire to return to his musical beginnings, he recently told Tony Clayton-Lee of The Irish Times:

“It was a lot of fun, yes, but towards the end, I just got sick of the whole thing. I was exploring all kinds of music, and when I got back into listening to traditional folk – which I hadn’t listened to for a long time – I just knew the punk band wasn’t for me. Now, I no longer feel like I’m pretending to be anything other than what and who I am.”

As one of the most under-rated and highly regarded singer-songwriters of recent years (and, believe me, I cringe whilst neatly tucking him into this particular pigeonhole), Yorkston’s disillusionment with punk turned out to be a timely gift to folkies far and wide. In an age when folk is experiencing a brave new wave, in the form of a largely American contingent such as Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Phosphorescent and Iron & Wine, Yorkston’s new collection of tried and tested folk songs strips bare and exposes the starting points for a thousand indie-folk reinventions.

Folk Songs, for want of a better phrase, does exactly what it says on the tin. But this stands to both the album as a single entity and Yorkston along with the backing of his Family Players. Just as the Scotsman expressed his contentment with the realization that folk music was his true calling, Folk Songs is an album that comes without pretences of being anything other than what it is. Drawing primary inspiration from folk heroine Annie Briggs, Yorkston applies his sparsely beautiful vocals to songs that have been passed down through generations of townspeople with stories to tell. In parts as warming as a hot whiskey by the fireside of a country inn on a cold day, songs such as lead single ‘Martinmas Time’ draw stark contrast to the album’s stormier numbers like ‘Mary Connaught & James O’Donnell’; a song native to Donegal relating to an argument between a priest and a local woman over timber that drifted ashore from the Atlantic. The priest wanted to commandeer all of the timber to build a church on the land where Mary lived but she contested his plans. It opens with the wonderfully descriptive and windswept lyrics: “Only a fool would go out in the sieve / Out in the teeth of a roaring gale”, accompanied by a thundering and sinister backdrop from his amazingly accomplished backing band. The Big Eyes Players command attention to their majestic capability as musicians on Spanish refrain ‘Pandeirada de Entrimo’ in particular.

The wistfully historical subject matter continues to hark back to rural days gone by with tales of poaching, highway robbery and murderous adultery throughout the course of the album. That an album as exquisitely stark and simple as Folk Songs can survive above the din and dissonance of today’s musical wasteland is a truly remarkable feat and one that confirms Yorkston as one of the greatest storytellers of our times, even if those stories belong to folk who have long since passed from this world.