Product Description

Karine Polwart’s third solo album Fairest Floo'er is a stark and intimate affair, which marks an understated return to traditional Scots song for the award-winning singer-songwriter. This is where her musical career began almost a decade ago, as a member of folk groups Malinky and, subsequently, Battlefield Band.

The pared-down arrangements of traditional ballads and love songs on this album feature little else other than sparse piano or guitar accompaniment, with the odd daub of atmospheric colour. Instead, the intense performances showcase Karine’s warm and earthy vocals and assured storytelling.

As a contrast, the bonus preview track "Can't Weld a Body" at the end of the CD serves as an appetizer for a forthcoming album of Polwart original compositions called This Earthly Spell - due out in the Spring of 2008.

Track Listing

1. Dowie Dens Of Yarrow
2. Thou Hast Left Me Ever Jamie
3. Mirk, Mirk Is This Midnight Hour
4. Birks Of Invermay
5. Will Ye Go Tae Flanders?
6. The Learig
7. The Death Of Queen Jane
8. The Wife of Usher's Well
9. Bonus track: Can't Weld A Body

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3640 in Music
• Released on: 2007-12-10
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Import

Songlines magazine, March 2008 (#50)
2007 was a fruitful year for the Scottish singer-songwriter Karine Polwart. As well as her first child, born in June, she has also delivered two new albums, including a third collection of original songs, titled This Earthly Spell, due out in March 2008 [and reviewed in the next issue]. Fairest Floo'er, meanwhile, finds Polwart touching base with the traditional material that prevailed in her early repertoire, before the closing track gives us a taste of the spring release. It's a spellbinding return to her roots, highlighting the eloquent interpretative gifts that have always gone hand-in-hand with Polwart's songwriting - itself richly informed by the narrative and poetic potency of traditional songs.
This is vividly to the fore on Fairest Floo'er, which takes its title from a line describing the dead lover mourned in the opening track, the classic Borders ballad `Dowie Dens of Yarrow'. This sets the album's largely melancholy mood and its stripped-down, spacious arrangements, with Polwart's clear, bittersweet, exquisitely nuanced voice here accompanied solely by Kim Edgar's sensitive piano chords. Other songs feature Polwart's guitarist brother Stephen - whose elegant, classical-style fingerwork brilliantly enhances the sombrely measured plaint of Robert Burns's `Mirk, Mirk Is This Midnight Hour' - while a truly heartrending account of `The Death of Queen Jane' unfolds in all its stark, anguished intensity over the slowly building drone of an Indian shruti box. Polwart's meticulous attention to phrasing, rhythm and diction, allied to her vibrant emotional empathy with the material, at once captures all the timeless resonance of such songs, while rendering them magically !
new.
Sue Wilson

Customer Reviews

The Fairest Floo'er of CDs!
I came across the CD by chance as I'd never heard of Karine Polwart, but decided to give it a try after listening to a brief extract of Mirk, Mirk is This Midnight Hour. I am so pleased I took the risk - it is absolutely astounding. I have always liked Dowie Dens of Yarrow since I heard Bert Jansch's version, but Karine's is so beautifully sung with such a hauntingly sparse accompaniment it has me in tears every time I listen to it. A wonderful CD!

Over produced?? Maybe not then
I bought this on the back of her album Scribbled in Chalk and I have to say that after the first listen I was wondering what I'd bought but I persevered and now this is up there with the best. I even have my two very young sons singing the Dowie Dens in the car and around the house. I explained that one to them but drew the line at Queen Jane. Such a sumptuous beauty in the girls voice and a real achievement to convey the stories held within old poems and the dialect that goes with them. Each day a new track sticks out and I find myself grieving with the mother of the three sons with the grass at their head and the clay at their feet one day and the next my sympathies are with King Henry and as for the girls brother in the Dowie Dens well I just want to sort him out.

Will Ye Go To Flanders? sticks with me at the moment. Strong youthful Scotsmen heading off for an adventure and then wiped out in to the sound of the bloody cannon. Haunting stuff.

Recommend this?? Yes I do but if you choose to buy this then I suggest you give it time to grow on you. Listen to the stories told and you will undoubtedly be captivated by Karines melodious unique vocals.

Remarkable
Karine Polwart, in my mind, has without doubt the most beautiful singing voice i have ever heard. Her 2 solo albums are simply stunning, and this is no exception. She sings the songs with such emotion that I find tears rolling down my cheeks. Especially the tragid tale in Dowie Dens of Yarrow and The Death Of Queen Jane. She is someone Scotland should be proud of.