Something rhymes
Martin Carthy is rightly celebrated as possibly the greatest interpreter of popular, handed-down songs from the anglophone world. This collection will do as good a job as any of telling you why. There is, for example, a typically limpid & understated account of the ballad ‘Lord Randall’ (whose question –and-answer structure Bob Dylan borrowed for ‘A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall’). But those who paint Carthy as a Ewan MacColl-style cultural Stalinist – and there have been a few, principally the kind of people whose idea of innovation in folk is to sing ‘Molly Malone’ to a triphop backbeat — underestimate his eclecticism. This collection not only introduced some novel instrumentation but also illustrates how far afield he looks for material. You’ll look in vain in your Child & Sharp anthologies for ‘Nothing Rhymed’: it’s a Gilbert O’Sullivan (remember him?) song to which you’d probably never given a second’s thought -- before you heard this version.
