The
Wife of Urban Law Peter Knight's Gigspanner
Now “The
Wife of Urban Law”
is formally launched,
the band are embarking on an extensive U.K. Tour to promote it. It is
Gigspanner's fourth album, timed to be on general release at
Halloween 2017. Canny marketing this, as it is both a magical and a
haunting album and the musicianship is devilishly good. (Sorry!)
Ex-Steeleye Peter Knight's
musicianship was once praised by the late Sir Terry Pratchett. Which
elevated him highly in my standing well before I first played this
new album. Peter and his Gigspanners are rightly popular. He likes to
attach his name to bands, just like John Mayall does with his
Bluesbreakers-but fair play:Knight's influence is everywhere on this
album. A graduate of The Royal Academy, his work is undeniably
pleasing and highly innovative. To say he plays the fiddle is like
saying Chopin was a decent pianist.
The album title is taken from an
inscription on an 1884 tombstone in an Oxfordshire graveyard. Urban
Law was a person rather
than a piece of legislation. The opening bars of Urban's
Reel's
is redolent of Dire Straits as in Telegraph Road or Private
Investigations. Knopfleresque notes are finger picked out over an
ominous background drone. It would be superbly spooky soundtrack
music. Then, just as you have settled to this gloomy opening, away it
dances into an entirely different mood and time zone. Eventually to
segue into a rather nifty, flamenco paced ending. Leaving the
listener scratching their head and wondering quite how they got
there.
Dancing across tabletops in some Taverna, when you started off
peeping through your fingers on top of some bleak moorland.
Lament For The Wife of Urban Law
is one of two songs
exploring who this guy and his wife may have been. Several of the
studio tracks are full of uncertaintly and conjecture like this.
Musical questionmarks, phrases and snatches of tunes hang in the air
along with the long,suspended chords which hum away threateningly
beneath the tracks.
Rocking The Cradle
is
a spinetingling piece of
work. Haunting sound effects accompany a structured musical
introduction and continue to provide an eerie background throughout.
It is a sad tale ,just ripe for telling round a blazing log fire at
the end of October and the start of Samhain. A quite extraordinary
piece of work, with mesmerising instrumentation leading to a sudden
ending, with waves washing somewhere onto a deserted midnight beach.
Probably only a synthesiser or a bit of creative sampling-but it had
me hiding behind the settee and checking that the front door was
locked every time I listened to it. The longest track on the album
but not a second is wasted.
Peggy and The Soldier
Is a metronomic treatment
of a familiar song. This lends a calm and relaxing air to it.
Spencer The Rover
is the framework of a well known and oft-performed piece of Folk
Music. Once again the scene is set with the vocal:a familiar tale of
misfortune and lamentation and reminiscence of travel in faraway
places. Then we are whisked away from Spencer's adventures and his
descent into poverty and off on a musical magic carpet ride. The
music perfectly fits Spencer's nomadic lifestyle and life journeys,
before his eventual return to a kind of domesticity.
Bold Riley
is one of my favourite
songs and this version stands up to all the others I know. Beware:
it is destined to be a horribly clingy earworm if you listen to it
too much or too often. The chorus is a great hook-always has
been,popular with singing audiences, but there is also a very nicely
paced central instrumental section.
Penny The Hero,
recorded “live” in Dartmouth, has echoes of Afro-Caribbean
rhythmns woven throughout-both from the guitar work of Roger Flack
and the percussion of Sacha Trochet. A flighty piece of nonsense with
a lighter mood than some of the other tracks-much as befits a song
dedicated to a pub game.
The
Blackbird was also recorded
“live”
at the Dartmouth venue. It is a delightful, richly layered
instrumental where Flack and Knight call out question and answer
phrases to each other. It wanders seamlessly through Jazz, Trad. Arr.
Rock and Classical and back again. Knight's depth of expression here
is tremendous. Subtle at times, infectiously rugged at others.
This is a cracking album. So many
good CDs have already been released in 2017, for example from Frigg,
Sam Kelly, The Young Uns,and Pilgrims Way, to name but a few. But
this one definitely deserves to be to be added to the (growing!) pile
of keepers.
I played it over and over again on first receipt and long after. I
heard something different in each track every time. Anyone adding
this to their collection will need to be fit. Your feet will be
tapping throughout and at times you may well be sorely tempted to
leap up and dance along with it. That's when you are not peering
under the table to ensure the Bogeyman is not hiding there.
