I must confess I find it very hard to be impartial about this one. Choosing to fill a whole CD with songs about one of my favourite subjects, English beer, Magpie Lane has surely won my heart.
Magpie Lane is a six-piece folk group from Oxfordshire. They use only acoustic, mostly traditional instruments such as assorted squeeze boxes, fiddle, guitar, whistles, flute, recorder and percussion. They have no intention of rocking up their songs or modernizing them. Instead they produce a sound with clear mediaeval influences. With all six members singing, they are strong vocally as well as instrumentally.
According to their homepage, A Taste of Ale is Magpie Lane’s sixth album. And you can tell that this is not a first effort. It is well produced and the songs are nicely sequenced, giving variation while still maintaining a clear Magpie Lane sound.
The topic has been dealt with before, notably on the marvellous Tale of Ale double LP released in the 1970s, but Magpie Lane follows their own course. They include a few songs that will be familiar to the connoisseur, like “A Drop of Good Beer,” “Bryng Us in Good Ale” and of course a version of “John Barleycorn.”
However, most of the songs here will probably be new to most listeners.
Magpie Lane have researched their topic well. The version of “John Barleycorn” they give is new to me, a Devon variety discovered as late as 1975. In choosing a song about picking hops, they opt for the modern “Hop Picking Song” by Peter Delaney rather than the more well-known “Hopping Down in Kent,” made popular by the Albion Dance Band.
Some of the songs have a humourous appeal. In “The Beer Drinking Briton,” published in 1750s, they sing about how strong the Britons get from drinking nutritious beer, compared to the skinny Frenchmen, bred on wine. In “Beer Boys Beer,” they give us a parody of the patriotic “Cheer Boys Cheer.” “The Drunkard and the Pig” is another of my favourites. Just half a minute long, performed solo a capella, it gives you a funny joke set to music. Another a capella song, in this case sung as a group, is “Drunk Last Night,” a song used by soldiers in both world wars.
Magpie Lane also treats us to a couple of instrumentals, “Stingo” from Playford’s Dancing Master (published 1651) and “The Hop Ground” from a manuscript published 1794.
Whether your interest is English beer, traditional English folk or mediaeval music, you could do much worse than seek out A Taste of Ale. As I have pointed out, it is well researched, well played, well sung and well produced. What more could you ask for?
(Beautiful Jo Records, 2000)
