Review: Three Cane Whale, St George’s

It’s a lovely word, Palimpsest, rich in arcane echoes and almost obsolete in our increasingly paperless times. Back when parchment was too precious to waste a palimpsest was a manuscript that had been blanked out and used again, with new meanings inscribed over the older originals. Thus it’s also a very apt choice for the title of Three Cane Whale’s new CD which, like its two antecedents, was launched at St George’s. The band’s music has always somehow seemed to be contemporary and yet ancient, harking back to an imaginary folk-past. To make the point Three Cane Whale would litter the St George’s stage with archaic instruments including bowed psaltery, zither, dulcitone, lyre-harp and baby harp – lost sounds previously buried under the modern hubbub and now saved for their particular soundscapes.

But before that a more simple image of a woman, dark clad and alone with microphone, two fiddles and the ubiquitous loop pedal. That was more than enough for Estonian musician Maarja Nuut to build a spellbinding set combining traditional music, songs, stories and dance. Her poise and grace as performer were enhanced by impeccable English and fine judgement in using the electronics to embellish and develop ‘flatfoot’ waltzes and polkas. For one tune she even whirled and stamped throughout while strumming the music on what looked like a mediaeval violin. The set finished as it opened with an acapella folk song filled out with rich harmony from the loop effect that emphasised both the clear beauty of her voice and the alluring clarity of the melody. It was a remarkable blend of ancient and modern in the hands of a skilled performer.

No fancy gizmos for Three Cane Whale, however, whose appearance in front of a satisfyingly full hall was received with friendly encouragement. Their acoustic music relied on the natural tones of their eccentric instrumentation, sometimes blended into further sounds through tight unison playing, as with the combination of dulcitone and mandolin on Moon In A Bottle or the high mandolin and cornet on the vigorous Shadows on the Chalk Hills. As on previous recordings, the new tunes were mostly inspired by particular places charged with history, tradition or sheer beauty, and as each slipped by it was rather like flicking through the pages of an old and random scrapbook full of sepia images. 

The music’s dynamic shifts meant paying acute attention, with even the creak of a leather jacket somewhere in the audience adding to the mix at times, but the three players were oblivious to such distractions. The complexity of the pieces and their sheer number – rarely do they last more than a couple of minutes – represented an amazing feat of memory that required intense concentration, though the relaxed manner of Pete Judge’s between-song banter gave the lie to that. It was interesting to note the evolutions from older tunes to the tracks from Palimpsest, with established favourites like the cascading Sluice or the urgent Eggardon Hill seeming less elaborated than the haunting autumnal exploration of The Bronze Sounding or the positively orchestral Gospel Pass. That latter, the album’s closing number, saw them joined by Maarja Nuut and cellist James Gow, both having played on the recording, and the additional complexity of string sound hints promisingly at explorations for the future, perhaps. But for the time being there’s more than enough in Palimpsest’s 21 tracks to celebrate Three Cane Whale’s disciplined acoustic intricacy and their seemingly limitless capacity for creative inspiration.