(2021) Jim Ghedi - In the Furrows of Common Place    


Review:
When we reviewed Jim Ghedi‘s 2018 album A Hymn for Ancient Land, a stand out message taken was one of the love and awe of nature, landscape and place. A mainly instrumental album, Hymn used spacious but orchestral arrangements to create joyous and undulating rhythms that guided us through the places Jim holds so dear. For In the Furrows of Common Place, the mood is less celebratory and more anxious, with Jim focusing on unrest, land enclosure and austerity. To do this, he adds muscle but more focus to his arrangements, clear from the first bar of Common Thread, when muted strummed strings introduce a healthy drum beat and dbh‘s strong violin playing. Like Chris Wood did so beautifully on his Trespasser album, Jim homes in on social injustices and the privatisation of land, with a haughty, throaty vocal sitting in front of the energetic backing. Another link to Trespasser and other Chris Wood works is the ‘Peasant Poet’ John Clare, the figure at the centre of Chris’s Mad John song and whose Lamentations of Round Oak Waters poem Jim sings here. One of the most powerful songs on In the Furrows, Lamentations of Round Oak Waters is arranged to harmonium and a mournful violin line, before Jim’s determined but almost world-weary voice rings out to sing a starkly beautiful work, desperately lamenting a period of time fast disappearing (‘There’s scarce a greensward spot remains / And scarce a single tree‘). It is quite heartbreaking and counter-balanced by the following song Mytholm, an instrumental piece meaning two rivers meeting and inspired by lost dialects. This one is more akin to Hymn, but again there is muscle here, with sturdy violin dueting nicely with Jim’s firmly picked acoustic guitar. If anything, the second side is even more rewarding than the first, with Ah Cud Hew just one of many peaches. This one has lyrics written by Ed Pickford and focuses on the absence of mining pits in County Durham. A short piece sang a capella with the band lending their vocal talents to provide low backing chants, the song has an oddly entrancing character, only broken by the guitar line introducing Beneath the Willow. Another song focusing on the economic struggles in northern England, this one builds a harrowing report around vital lyric ‘this flimsy house is falling down, with us inside‘. The violin is integral again and sweeps us into Beneath the Willow Part II, an instrumental sister tune, accompanying a diverse guitar part carrying a tune as rewarding as the main body, particularly in the brooding last segment. Best of all though is final number Son David, a version of a traditional Scottish ballad, here influenced by Jeannie Robertson’s telling. The arrangement for this one is the simplest, with Jim’s guitar at the fore playing a beautiful line, but his vocal is quite magical, sounding both ancient and softly urgent. The lifted notes, slowly sang, are most affecting and give this one real depth and power. It’s a stunning, enduring piece and is a befitting end to a remarkable album with bags of passion, creativity and precision from the always fascinating Jim Ghedi. — folkradio.co.uk


   


Track List:
01 - Common Thread
02 - The Lamentations of Round Oak Waters
03 - Mytholm
04 - Stolen Ground
05 - Ah Cud Hew
06 - Beneath the Willow
07 - Beneath the Willow, Pt. II
08 - Son David


Media Report:
Genre: folk
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)


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