Review: Jim Moray, The Folk House – ‘Utterly delightful’

It’s probably about time that some dues were paid.

Way back at the end of the 1990s English Folk music was in a dreadful state. The Fast Show lampooned it, the image was of tankards of ale and fingers in ears, the only people interested were earnest,  bearded, old men.

Almost no one cared. Those that did, loved Irish (or Balkan) energy and bounced, drunkenly, around at free festivals.

Then, three albums were released that changed everything. Eliza Carthy‘s Red Rice was first in 1998, Bellowhead‘s Burlesque came later, in 2006, and sandwiched in the middle, Jim Moray released the awe inspiring, Mercury nominated, Sweet England in 2003.

Suddenly, English Folk was, if not actually cool, then exciting again.

Every single bloke with a guitar that sings a clever arrangement of a centuries old tune has Moray to thank. Whether they know it or not.

Every single person that fuses a Broadside ballad with nifty electronics does it because Moray did it at the start of the century.

This, his first tour in three years, celebrates 21 years since his first release and looks forward to a new album soon. That one is going to be a re-recorded retrospective so, not unreasonably, tonight is packed with favourites.

Starting with Lemady, the first track from his first EP from twenty-odd years ago, he resurrects his little loop box and multi-tracks himself, creating layers and layers of his voice.

What’s immediately apparent is that that voice is as strong, as clear as it’s ever been. You remember just why it is that, as a singer of old songs, Jim Moray is unsurpassed.

The tech is a bit clunky, a bit homespun but is also utterly delightful.

The old songs are welcomed like long lost friends and picked up as though they’ve never been away. Jenny of the Moor, Long Lankin, Lord Douglas, Lord Franklin, all are just as beautiful as the last time we heard them.

Moray loves a good, old-fashioned story and all of these fit perfectly. Lovers are wronged, promises broken and blood is spilled.

You start to realise that these songs, these arrangements, are so familiar but they’re only so familiar because Moray has made them so.

The new album will have a couple of songs that he’s been playing live for several years but have never made it to an album.

Spencer the Rover sits somewhere between the John Martyn and the Copper Family versions, he promises that on the album there will be a saxophone solo but, tonight, we just settle for his fabulous voice and guitar.

Jim Jones at Botany Bay is everything that Moray does wonderfully well. A story of transportation, pirates, desperation and dreams.

It is a boys-own adventure mixed with brutal reality; a whole novel of historical fiction wrapped into five minutes of exquisite storytelling.

Most of the songs that Moray plays are as old as the hills, as old as the Bristol streets (he lived in Bristol up until relatively recently) but there are two that he wrote himself and it’s these two that are undoubted highlights of the set.

The Straight Line and The Curve is a song about John Dee, an English mathematician, astrologer, teacher, alchemist and occultist. It’s a story of talking to angels, of philosophy and the mysteries of the universe.

It has a regal sweep of keyboards and is, simply, a clever song about clever things. It has always been, and continues to be, brilliant.

Equally brilliant is Sounds of Earth. Moray tells us that he feels that this song is no longer his, that it belongs to other people because it has become a wedding favourite.

It is open-mouthed with the glory of love, a triumphant heart-swell of a song, it, truly, gazes out into the heavens to find connections.

There is no other song (with the possible exception of Ben Folds’ The Luckiest) that so perfectly captures how it feels to fall in love. Tears were surreptitiously dabbed away on the back row.

Moray tells us that he thought about packing all of the singing in over the last few years. Tonight’s audience was very glad that he’s decided against that.

The Folk world would be an infinitely poorer place without him. It’s about time that respect was properly paid, that people remembered who helped make English Folk music exciting again.

Main photo: Ant Miles

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