Take Lorraine Kelly and Marion Storey both on fiddles, add Allen Bowling on highland and border pipes, Bob Smith on vocals, mandolin, guitar, tin whistles and bodhran, Chic Judge on highland pipes and vocals, and Tom Docherty on guitar and vocals, and there you have it – Celtic folk music blended in a single malt style. But is this the real thing from Scotland? Err ,not exactly – the album was recorded live at The Golden Lion public house in Prittlewell, Nr Southend, Essex. However, I have to admit to being slightly biased to liking ‘live’ recordings. For this is how folk music is, and how it should sound: ‘live’. This may not be to everyone’s taste, because the quality of what you hear is not the same as a studio enhanced recording. Getting a good balance of instruments and the vocals over the top is not an easy task, I know from my own experience how difficult this can be. However, The Skirlers have managed it quite well – full marks to their sound man Chic Judge. Unfortunately, the album cover is light on song notes or other details about the band. This is the sort of thing a lot of bands send out to prospective venues and festivals when looking for a booking. This may account for there only being eight tracks, rather like it was in the old days of vinyl LP’s when we were content with eight or nine tracks.
The choice of songs falls into the easy listening category. A lot of them are now regarded as folk standards and everyone’s favourites. The album starts with the title track ‘Cutting The Bracken’, a lone piper, and gradually building to a crescendo with the whistle, guitar and finally the fiddles. This followed by tradition songs ‘The Bonny Lass ‘o’ Fife’, ‘Lizzy Lindsay’, ‘Mingulay Boat Song’ and ‘Mountain Thyme’. The other tunes include some fine piping on ‘Border Ballad’ that pins the song ‘Roddy McCorley’ nicely. The other instrumentals are ‘Skirlers Hornpipe’ and ‘Floral Dance Reel’.
True, some of the songs or tunes are not without the odd ‘nervous’ mistake, but this does not matter one jot. You’ll be hard placed to spot them anyway! And that’s part of the charm of the album. I have a feeling this album is just a taste of what the Skirlers are like live.
(Zebra, 2003)
[Peter Massey]
