(2022) Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves - Hurricane Clarice            


Review:
Respectively from Winnipeg and North Carolina, clawhammer banjo player and fiddle Tatania Hargreaves joined forces three years ago to release their eponymous joint debut. They return now with Hurricane Clarice, a second collection of song and instrumentals which, recorded in Portland, draw on their collective family histories and communities, including audio recordings of their respective grandmothers. Rehearsing and recording the material, variously culled from rare field recordings, old hymns, modern literary sources and original compositions, they took the unconventional approach of performing two live sets over four days to capture the energy and intimacy of their live performances. By contrast, sampled fragments of their banjo and fiddle were also put through filters and used as short sonic interludes and overlays throughout the album. It opens with a vocal number, Hargreaves’ fiddle droning and de Groot’s banjo bobbing along through The Banks of the Miramichi, a traditional ballad from New Brunswick, Canada, written in the mid-1800s by lumber fisherman Patrick Hurley in celebration of the river but, the track also serves as a reminder of the loss to its ecosystem caused by the Canadian government spraying massive amounts of DDT around the Miramichi to fight the spruce budworm. The incident featured in Rachel Carson’s 1962 environmental science book Silent Spring which focused on the impact of pesticides. Written by de Groot, fiddle sawing and banjo burbling behind it, Wellington is the first of five instrumentals, the title recalling her grandmother’s home in Wellington Crescent overlooking the Assiniboine River, followed by lively square tune Nancy Blevins, the tune reputedly written by a neighbour of Virginia fiddle-maker Albert Hash’s grandfather, a pipe-smoking, witchcraft practising fiddler named Nancy Blevins Baker. Penned by Hargreaves and opening with a sample of Allison’s great aunt Tillie speaking in Ukrainian about her sister, the title track fiddle tune was inspired by reading The Chandelier by Clarice Lispector, whose Jewish Ukrainian family fled to Brazil in 1922, around the same time that her great grandmother Taube fled Eastern Europe. A moody tune that echoes its geographical background, it’s paired with the far friskier traditional Brushy Fork of John’s Creek. The final two instrumentals sit alongside each other towards the end of the album, Dead and Gone (Hen Cackled), a traditional number by way of Mississippi fiddler Butch Cage, the version here incorporating variations of the two tunes of the title and punctuated by vocal yelps, the other being another energetic Hargreaves original, Ostrich with Pearls, preceded by recordings of her two grandmothers, Sylvia and Jean, and de Groot’s grandmother Shirley. Returning to the songs, the three remaining numbers are all covers, first up being the old-time country of Roy Acuff’s Each Season Changes You, a number about seasonal depression that was learnt from bluegrass singer Rose Maddox. On a more sedate musical note, I Would Not Live Always takes its lyrics from a poem by William Augustus Muhlenberg set to tune by M.L. Swan, the drone feel and scratchy pizzicato fiddle inspired by Tennessee fiddler Clarence Ferrell. It ends with The Road Walked by Fools by Kilby Snow, a virtuoso autoharpist from North Carolina known for his “drag note” playing style, which relied on his left-handedness to produce slurred notes that a right-handed player could never create, the song an old-time country number that playfully speaks about the often absurd life of the travelling musician. While Allison de Groot and Tatiana Hargreaves’ debut rightfully saw them critically acclaimed as a shining new force in string band music, Hurricane Clarice shows their light to be even brighter.





Track List:
1.The Banks of the Miramichi 03:11
2.Wellington 03:23
3.Nancy Blevins 03:09
4.Each Season Changes You 03:30
5.Hurricane Clarice / Brushy Fork of John’s Creek 06:36
6.I Would Not Live Always 04:22
7.Dead and Gone (Hen Cackle) 02:18
8.Ostrich with Pearls 05:08
9.The Road That’s Walked by Fools 02:36


Media Report:
Genre: bluegrass, folk
Country: USA
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits


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