Track Listing

1. Claudy Banks
2. Little Gypsy Girl
3. Banks Of The Bann
4. Murder Of Maria Marten
5. Van Dieman's Land
6. Just As The Tide Was A 'Flowering
7. White Hare
8. Hal An Tow
9. Poor Murdered Woman

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5986 in Music
• Released on: 2008-02-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

CD Description
This album's significance rivals that of Dylan's plugging in at Newport. Shirley Collins joins the electrified Albion Country Band, which featured members of Fairport Convention, including Richard Thompson and Ashley Hutchings. This is a startling confluence of forms, as the full rock sound meets Shirley's enchanting balladry. Touching on love and loss, murder and rebirth, these songs are sometimes harrowing yet immensely satisfying in their delivery. "Murder of Maria Marten" illustrates that point as deep textures coalesce making for a driving, almost Celtic rock sound. "The Little Gypsy Girl" drifts about in a smoky haze. NO ROSES is another bit of proof that Collins is one of the finest interpreters of English ballad and song, and going electric does nothing but enhance her artistry.

Customer Reviews

Englishness
I have to admit I was a little disappointed with this CD at first. I was hoping for something more like Liege and Lief, what with so many alums of that best folk rock record ever present (on one track or another, everybody but Sandy Denny and Dave Swarbrick). But this is very much an Ashley Hutchings project, and Hutchings left Fairport Convention because he thought their sound wasn't folky enough. Another way to look at this is that it's an electric Shirley Collins record. The point is it doesn't rock all that hard-its still electric, still kinda folk rock, but it has a much more gentle, rural vibe. The only song that strongly calls Liege and Lief to mind is The Murder of Maria Marten, which is so great it's almost worth the price of the CD.

But if you take the rest of the CD on it's own terms, it's pretty interesting. Hutchings and Collins were trying to revitalize traditional English music, which they saw as moribund and endangered by the spread of American and Celtic music. The result is so unrepentantly unabashedly English that for a Yank like myself, and I suspect for many English listeners as well, it's almost exotic, like a kind of world music, as foreign-sounding in it's whiter-than-white way as the latest disc out of Mali or Tuva. They're not afraid of concertinas or fol-a-diddle fol-a-day choruses here. But, for my money, they make them work. It doesn't sound corny, it sounds rootsy-English roots, mate. We're not talkin' uptight repressed bowler hat and umbrella British English, we're talkin' earthy peasant English, singing for pints in the pub dancing round the May Pole bringing in the sheep screwing in the hay English. And some of the melodies are really beautiful, particularly The Banks of the Bann (with Shirley's sister Dolly on piano) and Just as the Tide Was Flowing (given a more rocked-out treatment twenty years later by 10,000 Maniacs).

Shirley is in fine voice (she describes her voice in the accompanying notes as "moldy and strange, but at least it's my own", which is a very fair assessment), although she does get buried a bit on the louder songs-she's no Sandy Denny. Her voice is more fragile, but that fragility can make it very affecting. It has a salt of the earth quality that I find very appealing, and it is of course quite, quite English.

The arrangements are excellent-varied and very evocative, with interesting mixes of instruments (electric guitar, medieval instruments, accordion, even the sound of a horse-drawn cart on one song) but they're a little tight-not a lot of soloing, which is, again, a bit of a disappointment given the fact that Richard Thompson is on board. But I think the idea was to keep the focus on the songs rather than on soloists.

shirley collins and the albion country band
This album was the start of the various forms of the albion country band.
Ashley Hutchings was married to Shirley Collins and brought the band together as a backing group for Shirleys new album "No Roses". Shirleys lovely untrained voice would have been drowned by a totally electric band and a lot of the band were specifically accoustic. The band included, Greg Butler (later of Strawhead) on Serpent, Richard Thompson on guitars, Ashley Hutchings on bass, Tim Renwick also on guitars. Also, among the backing singers was one Maddy Prior.
I still have the album on vinyl and still occasionally listen to it. Songs like, Just as the Tide was a flowing, Maria Marten (The murder in the Red Barn), Claudy Banks, Hal an Tow including accompaniment by Jaws harp and hammered dulcimer, as only Shirley Collins could sing them.

A classic Folk Album.

Better Than Liege And Lief
For me this is a more acomplished album than L&L by the Fairports. I know that said album came first by about two years, but the real spirit of English folk music is summed up by the stuff on this album. I must admit I purchased this with some misgivings. If I'm honest I wasn't sure that Shirley Collins with an amplified backing band would work. In reality I should not have worried - because it most definitely does.

There's nothing slick or refined about the songs here. They have a ragged, woosy, English charm, which is insightful and charming. As you will see from the cover there is a cast of thousands here. The likes of Ashley Hutchings, Nic Jones, John Kirkpatrick, Mady Prior et al, are all here and playing together ensemble for the benefit of the song rather than egos.

Standout tracks, well basically all of them. 'Banks Of The Bann', 'Hal and Tow', 'Dieman's Land', I could go on. I have not stopped playing this record!!!!!.