Cordelia’s Dad is one of a number of acts that started as a punkish rock band in the early Nineties and morphed into a roots band by the end of the decade. The Massachusetts-based combo went further into their roots than most, however, and ended up unearthing and performing traditional American music from the 18th Century on.
They’ve not released anything new since 2000’s superb Spine, but here we have a mini-CD single with three outtakes and rarities, and their third release on Omnium that’s in much the same vein as Spine.
Frontman Tim Eriksen has a perfect voice for this kind of music: dry, slightly nasal and somewhat aloof, but without a trace of irony. He can sing a murder ballad in a straightforward way that never editorializes on the material, but which is in itself a commentary. And the pairing of Ericksen’s voice with the languid (but not lazy) vocal stylings of Cath Oss is a powerful and beautiful phenomenon.
Eriksen accompanies the songs with supple fingerpicked or plucked guitar and banjo, to which Peter Irvine adds a frame-drum beat and Becky Miller fiddle, and you’d swear you were in a tavern or public house in the 1850s.
Comet runs heavy with murder ballads and other morality tales, starting with “May Blooming Fields,” in which a woman is killed by her lover. Eriksen’s guitar sounds very much like a mountain dulcimer, which is probably how the song was originally accompanied. “The Sun and the Moon” offers a similar story, a very English-sounding ballad in which a mother interrogates her son as to the origin of the blood on his clothes. Eriksen’s percussive picking seems influenced by Jansch or Renbourn here.
“Katy Cruel” is a lovely duet by Eriksen and Oss, a capella on the first verse, a haunting and melodic song that features a Mother Goose rhyme as the chorus, with lots of “diddle-o-day”s. “Gypsy Davy” is a variation of the song also known as “Black Jack Davy,” oft recorded of late, in which a woman leaves her husband and baby for the love of a dark-eyed stranger.
“George Collins” and “The Dying Californian” are two variations on the theme of someone dying from being caught out in the weather. Miller turns in some lovely mournful fiddling on the latter.
The disc also has a couple of instrumental tracks. “Booth Shot Lincoln/Hangman’s Reel” features an old Southern fiddle tune and a reel of French origin to which Eriksen adds mouth music. The final regular track, “Sugar Baby,” is a sprightly banjo tune with echoes of “Soldier’s Joy,” played here on a beautiful antique instrument.
Eriksen sings unaccompanied, mountain style on “Old Virginia,” and sacred-harp style on “Seven Long Years,” a song about the life and dreams of an apprentice that has at times been a drinking song, at times a hymn.
A bonus track, “Jersey City,” is a rocked-up electrified version of a traditional song about a girl in love with a butcher boy. The distorted and jangling guitars jar a bit after the all-acoustic record, but it’s instructive to hear the same kind of vocal harmonies on a bit of post-punk as on old-time mountain music.
Comet isn’t the equal of Spine, and the production is murkier, but it’s a very fine recording of modern interpretations of old songs.
Jane has one acoustic and two electric songs. The title track, an outtake from the Spine sessions, features Oss in the lead vocal with the tale of “plain Jane” and her rape at the hands of a forester, a traditional ballad of sexual shenanigans and class struggle. “Promise” is a slow and ominous rocker on a modern theme, and “Closing Year” is a melding of two traditional songs in a modern rock setting that builds to a shattering climax and closes with a lengthy electric guitar workout.
This mini-CD is a tantalyzing glimpse of Cordelia’s Dad’s range as a group. It’s available only on the Web through something called the Dark Beloved Could Singles Club. You can get a free CD single every month by submitting art to be used as album covers. I’m not quite sure I understand the premise, but you can check it out at the club’s Web site. And you can keep an eye on Cordelia’s Dad at their Web site.
(Omnium, 1995)
(Dark Beloved Cloud, 2003)
