GothamAcme: Howard's Top Albums of the Year
gothamacme:5. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins - Diamond Mind and Fernhill - Canu Rhydd
“Diamond Mind” is a melancholy documentary of life in a Scottish fishing village. Jon Hopkins supplies the found sound and lovely fiddle and piano arrangements that evoke Fife’s windswept isolation in winter. Kenny Anderson’s keening tenor narrates the everyday lives of fisherman at sea and the families they leave behind on the coast. Each song is it’s own tale — the sailor who dreams of the ocean when he’s on land and pines for home when he’s away; a middle-aged man’s reflections on mortality after “finding silver in my sideburns;” a woman who arrives in church soaked from a summer rainstorm. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej8vMh28SJY
One day, two summers ago, I left London at dawn, trained to Mold, Wales, and walked six miles from the train station there to a little field to see Fernhill perform at a Welsh folk festival. The trip was worth every step — Julie Murphy has a voice that calls across oceans and her bandmates bathe her every word in trumpet, fiddle, guitar, and flute. On “Canu Rhydd” Murphy sings a mixture of traditional and original songs in both English and Welsh. It’s music worth traveling for — but you won’t have to.
