Traditional music finds its popular, cosy home in the carol, despite the uncanniness that surrounds the nativity story, and the fraying thread back to the past that each winter brings. A veteran explorer of the season (in 2020’s sparkling Winter Rituals EP with cellist Kate Ellis, and 2022’s starker New Christmas Rituals, with amplified fiddle-playing from André Bosman), Laura Cannell sets out on her best and darkest journey yet here, exploring the time of year when, as she writes on the liner notes, “joy and heartache try to exist together”.
Named after the line in Good King Wenceslas before the cruel frosts arrive, Brightly Shone the Moon begins at the organ – a nod to Cannell’s childhood Christmases in the Methodist chapels and churches of Norfolk. Cannell’s fiddle then quivers around the 16th-century folk melody of O Christmas Tree/O Tannenbaum, as if the carol is swirling in a snowglobe, trying to settle in memory. All Ye Faithful follows, full of murky repetitions of the pre-chorus passages, where choirs usually sing “come let us adore him”. But here, love feels stuck, rooting around like an animal in the ground, a sonic reminder of how smothering and strenuous the winter can be for many.
Beauty does appear elsewhere. The high melodies of Lost in a Merry Christmas seem to flurry around each other prettily in the air, then melt together. Bleak Midwinter has an urgent, icy rush to it, replacing melancholy with a frisky kind of hope. The apocalyptically titled Angels Falling from the Realms is the warmest of the lot, full of flickers of long-forgotten hymns magically appearing and disappearing. This is an album not for the party or the tree decorations, but one that carries you, hauntingly, through the passing of time, slips of ancient songs lighting the way like Christingles.
Also out this month
Anna Pidgorna’s Invented Folksongs (Redshift) is the fascinating result of the Ukrainian-Canadian singer travelling to Ukraine to study with traditional music practitioners, then adopting folk idioms into her freewheeling, avant garde style. The album ranges from fabulous, feral power on tracks such as Drown in the Depth to urgent longing in What Else Can I Give Him?
Released in time for Hanukkah, Michael Winograd Plays Tanz! (Borscht Beat) is a spirited live performance by virtuoso clarinettist Winograd of the long-celebrated 1955 klezmer album by Dave Tarras and the Musiker Brothers, which fused traditionally Ashkenazi Jewish instrumental music with jazz.
Winter Wonderband’s Joy Illimited (self-released) brings together folk musicians Jennifer Crook, Maclaine Colston, Saul Rose and Beth Porter in the making of a mixed grab-bag of festive tunes. The best are takes on Shepherds Are the Cleverest Lads, learned from the Watersons, and Boo Hewerdine’s New Year’s Eve.
