Dirty Linen #96, 2001

It's time warp times two from these Swedish bands. Not only do they present music from the early times of their land, but these discs also come from the early times of each band. Both groups use a wide variety of ethnic and sometimes ancient acoustic instruments (hurdy-gurdies, bouzoukis, jaw harps, along with fiddles, guitars, and more) to blend medieval sounds with modern rhythms.

Garmarna has grown to prominence as a purveyor of "ancient modern" music, but all of the songs on this album are acoustic — the tape loops and programmed drums came later on. This reissue album lends more of a folk air to the sound than current fans might expect. The first seven songs are from the band's 1993 initial mini-album, and since she'd just joined the band, only a couple of songs feature the vocals of Emma Härdelin. The last eight songs are bonus tracks — demos recorded by the original trio configuration, without drums or Härdelin's vocals. If you're a fan of adventurous and dark dance folk, go for it. If you're looking for the more techno or vocal end of Garmarna, you might be disappointed.

Hedningarna has always had a core acoustic trio, adding and shedding outstanding female vocalists along the way. The bands mine sounds similar to Garmarna, calling their music "acoustic instrumentals with an infernal groove." This reissue of its first album from 1989 features just the core trio (no vocals) hammering the same instrumental mix as Garmarna while adding traditional Scandinavian moraharpa (a three-stringed keyed fiddle), hardanger fiddle, and Swedish bagpipes. Songs are a mix of trad and self-penned with lots of frame drums upon which the players build their rhythms. Though it's more traditional and acoustic than later albums, it still conveys that spooky Swedish folkster vibe. Alas, no bonus tracks.
— Jeff Lindholm (Charlottesville, VA)

Of the many female bluegrass musicians today, Rhonda Vincent deserves special mention. Vocalist of the Year in 2000 for the International Bluegrass Music Association, Vincent is commanding in this followup to her well-received CD Back Home Again. With her band, The Rage, she sings everything from blues to hard-driving bluegrass. Vincent's crystalline voice and sweetly blended harmonies from her brother, bassist Darrin Vincent, and others, make this a standout album and one of the best she's ever done.

This CD is also propelled by fine instrumentation. While Vincent ably plays mandolin, there's heart-pumping banjo picking from ex-Johnson Mountain Boy (and IBMA Banjo Player of the Year) Tom Adams, riveting fiddling from Grammy-winning fiddler Stuart Duncan (Nashville Bluegrass Band), and solid guitar playing from Bryan Sutton (Ricky Skaggs, Dolly Parton).

The songs offer traditional country and bluegrass themes, from heartache and betrayal to love and gospel reverence. Vincent offers a bluegrass tribute to the late Bill Monroe, considered the father of bluegrass music, in "Is the Grass Any Bluer," one of the CD's catchier tunes, "Is the grass any bluer on the other side/Did it look like old Kentucky when the gates swung open wide/Bet the good Lord's got you playing somewhere up there every night/Is the grass any bluer on the other side?"

There's plenty of other up-tempo bluegrass here. The classic Gerald Irby melody "Drivin' Nails in My Coffin" (about love and booze, apparently always a lethal combo) takes on renewed energy in this fast-paced bluegrass remake. Fiddler Mike Cleveland chimes in on Bobby Osborne's "Bluegrass Express." And Vincent's original opening track, "Cry of the Whippoorwill," is a fine mournful bluegrass song about lost love.

Vincent helped pen three of the 13 tracks, and longtime friend and Opry star Alison Krauss joins Darrin Vincent in the cohesive harmonies of her "When the Angels Sing." "I'm Not Over You" (which continues, "the storm still rages") is fine country blues about a woman pining for her love, with sweetly affecting fiddle and Dobro from Rob Ickes (rhymes with "bikes"). Another piece that mills Vincent's country side, "Don't Lie," has crossover potential. And Vincent knows how to wrap her voice around the blues, like Hank Williams' "My Sweet Love Ain't Around."

Interestingly, Vincent delved into commercial country years ago and has since returned to her bluegrass roots, even recording the theme song for Martha White flour, a longtime bluegrass sponsor. The fans of this Missouri native and plenty of newcomers ought to be thrilled with this release.

LaFave is a rare commodity. Not only does he possess a wonderfully expressive voice, but he also sings with passion and writes solid songs to boot. Just as importantly, he makes consistently good albums and has the knack when it comes to choosing other writers' material. On Texoma, his sixth album, he has once again made surprising or challenging choices, such as John Phillips/Scott Mackenzie hit "San Francisco," Ten Years After's "Rock and Roll Music to the World," and Jimmy Webb's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress."
From the opening notes and loping rhythm of the first track, an original called "Bad Bad Girl," it's obvious that LaFave can once again be relied upon to deliver the goods. Just as importantly, the quartet backing him up, with guitarist Larry Wilson and keyboardist David Webb returning to the fold, offer support that is more often than not inspired. Both LaFave and the band make the transition from plaintive ballads to out-and-out rockers with impressive ease. Gretchen Peters' "On a Bus to St. Cloud" (recorded by Trisha Yearwood) starts off with Webb playing Bill Staines' "Wind River Turnaround" melody on piano. Nice touch.
Although LaFave was born in Texas, he moved to Oklahoma while in his teens, which explains the album's title. LaFave is a staunch admirer of fellow Okie Woody Guthrie, and he offers a touching homage to the man who continues to inspire him. True to his own habit, and to his own reputation as one of the very best Dylan interpreters extant, LaFave also covers "Emotionally Yours." The album closes with two very different tracks, his own "On the Road to Rock and Roll" and one of the best recorded versions of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" ever, on a par with the two renditions of the song by Jimmy Webb himself.
— Paul E. Comeau (Comeauville, NS, Canada)

Montcorbier is a French-Canadian trio who evolved from the acclaimed Ad Vielle que Pourra group. Daniel Thonon, who wrote 13 of the 16 selections, plays a range of instruments that include diatonic accordion, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, oboe, and flute, while Olivier Demers plays fiddle, guitar, and bouzouki, and Nicolas Boulerice is featured on piano, organ, and synthesizer. The trio, which is augmented by guests on a couple of tracks, plays an all-instrumental repertoire that is often stunningly beautiful.
While Montcorbier's music is original, except for the closing "Choral prélude" by Bach, it is a cohesive blend of traditional and classical elements, with an occasional infusion of jazz. For example, Thonon suggests that "Oi! altas ondas," the opening track, sounds as if McCoy Tyner could have written it, had he been from Provence. Other tracks include reels, some Breton dances played on the biniou koz or on the rustic oboe, a miniature waltz for solo piano, a wedding march, and a bourrée. The title track is a slow, melancholic waltz that Thonon wrote in San Marcos, Texas. "Diatology" features the French Gypsy guitarist Angelo Debarre, as well as double bass and drums. One of the most unusual tunes has an anagram with the names of the musicians as its title and is probably the first Scott Joplin-type ragtime ever played on the hurdy-gurdy.
Montcorbier's debut is an elegant pastiche of original music that should appeal as much to fans of classical music as it does to those with more of a penchant for traditional styles.
— Paul E.Comeau
(Comeauville, NS, Canada)

Intuition/Nubenegra INN 1104-2 (2000)
Fresh off a splendid retrieval of Iberian-Arabic sensualist El Zaqqaq's Islamically suppressed erotic poetry on his last album, Mediterranean musical sojourner Luis Delgado scrapes away the patriarchal façade of Moorish Spain in pursuit of feminine thrown muses. From the post-Franco renaissance of interest in Spain's North African and Middle Eastern cultural roots comes a deeper level of appreciation for what multi-instrumentalist and musical arranger Delgado says in his accompanying essay is the heretofore anonymous essence of Medieval European women's poetry. Delgado sets poems and fragments of verse from six women poets of El Moravid (Moor), El Mohadic (Berber Islamic conquerors), and El Andalus, including Amazigh (Berber), Arabian, and Judean literary figures. The lives and loves of these select poets illustrate the Mediterranean tragic aspects of romance, where the stakes tend to be bloody high.
Delgado and his intimate ensemble of players and Arabic-Spanish guest vocalists keep the currents synthetically calm with electronic atmospherics. This makes the exquisitely spun verse all the more dramatic when passionate spells on hand percussion and period strings channel earthly and transcendental desires. Delgado elegantly frames the work of these chosen multicultural women artists, enmeshed as they are in their particular social tensions. In the English translation provided within the artful CD booklet, Delgado lucidly states "In them (the verse of the Moajaxas) the woman explicitly and unabashedly reveals her desires. No longer the object of passion, she becomes its agent and demands unreservedly the attentions of her beloved. …It is they who adorn themselves in order to seduce, they who perfume themselves in order to conquer and they who cultivate their minds for the sheer love of the pursuit of knowledge." Rather than spellbinding, this is a spell-liberating album of MENA (Middle Eastern-North African) sensual music. As with the classic Egyptian film Destiny by director Yussef Chahine dealing with the collapse of the liberal Caliph and his intellectual minister and adviser Ibn Rushd, the social tensions that are reflected seem strikingly contemporary. Issues of gender, class, cultural cohesion, and lingual primacy vie ecstatically and then desperately for authority on España's lush and momentous stage.
— Mitch Ritter (Concord, CA)

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