Henry Parker – Lammas Fair

What does it sound like?:

This is a great day for Yorkshire troubadour Henry Parker and his followers – ‘Lammas Fair’, his second album and the fruit of a long gestation, is released into the world. ‘I’ve loved working on the record from start to finish for the past year and a half (longer if you count songwriting) – it’s been an incredibly rewarding process,’ said Henry, on his social media earlier today.

I’d been aware of Henry through a splendid lockdown video collaboration with my pal Brooks Williams, and then through investigating some of his online videos – a small but select offering of unusual covers, Renaissance tunes and the like. I bought ‘Lammas Fair’ in advance from Bandcamp after hearing the mesmerising title track in an online preview clip and a trip to Yorkshire last weekend meant that Henry could (quite rightly) save himself the postage and give me a copy in person. Over coffee and bonhomie, I liked the cut of his jib – a thoughtful, quietly spoken fellow who serves as another reminder-to-self that I talk too much.

It struck me that I had probably met and interviewed, in the 90s (when I imagine Henry was a primary school), most of the people from the 60s and 70s, some no longer with us, whose music informs his own. It was a strange feeling to hear that Henry and his partner, fellow troubadour / guitar whiz Kate Spencer, were both reading my book on Bert Jansch when they met.

I got a first chance to hear Henry’s new album the following night, last Sunday, driving through the rain from Skipton to Carlisle. It fitted the darkness, rain and terrain perfectly. Other reviewers have referenced the sense of place in the album and I can only concur. He spends a lot of time perambulating around moors and by golly it shows. A dark, strange and ancient air pervades the record. It reminds me of the same sort of ‘weird air’ apparent on the early 70s albums by Mr Fox (led by Bob and Carol Pegg, also from Yorkshire) and also brought to mind the modal, offbeat, ruminative feel of Michael Chapman (yes, also northern). Alongside the textured heft of several tracks (with electric bass and drums deftly employed, along with flute and violin in places) there is a feeling of sparseness in the record – not a word wasted, not a sound unintended, musically taciturn (like all good Yorkshiremen of myth) yet richly organic rather than ‘studio crafted’. The (real or unreal) analogue atmosphere is intoxicating. Engineer and co-producer Kurt Wood at Corner House Studio in Keighley has done a fabulous job.

There are a lot of people these days playing Bert Jansch’s music note for note – and that’s great – but Henry has taken what he needed from that source, and from others, and has crafted, I believe, an individual voice from the bones of 60s British fingerstyle and the weathered old towers of progressive-rock. Henry’s fingerstyle influences were on his sleeve on his first album, ‘Silent Spring’, which I’ve since heard, but on this record it’s as if he has not roamed around further for influences, like a magpie, but has determinedly narrowed his focus into a particular soundworld and way of playing. He could easily have chosen to showcase the wide range of things he could do on his instrument but the body of work here and the unity of sound and expression has resulted in a record that is much more of a personal statement.

The title track draws most obviously from the parallel wells of British prog and folk, but the same streams pass closely also around the arresting, dramatically odd arrangement of the traditional song ‘Death and the Lady’, performed on acoustic guitar with only Richard Curran’s violin and cello as an extra sound. For those wanting a direct line back to Fairport Convention’s genre-defining folk-rock of ‘A Sailor’s Life’ (1969), look no further than the traditional ‘Brisk Lad’, learned from a Mike Waterson record. Where Fairport Convention’s earliest adventures in folk-rock tended to be tales of seafaring derring-do, often in major keys, Henry’s ‘Brisk Lad’ concerns itself with blasted heaths and common thievery (the fellow in the song – not the singer’s riffs), and his guitar playing here deals in layers of sound rather than linear passages. It’s a thrilling sound. Henry’s folk-rock odyssey uses his own vocabulary, not that of Richard Thompson, though the vocal delivery and intensity of the song does bring to mind Thompson’s ‘Calvary Cross’ from the mid-70s. One couldn’t say that Henry’s voice is conventionally attractive, but like the similarly unconventional voices of Thompson or Jansch, you get used to it – you make a little effort and you find the rewards.
I’ve also had an opportunity to hear Kate Spencer’s 2019 album ‘Weather Beaten’ this week. I knew from online clips that it would be accomplished but I wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming brilliance of vocal and instrumental nuances, songwriting and arranging. It’s very different from Henry’s music. A very crude comparison might be that Henry deals in hearty curried parsnip soup on a wintry night with the electric down in a storm and a candle flickering on the table while Kate deals in finely presented Michelin-star plates, from recipes that have been finely honed, on a sunny afternoon – but on a terrace table overlooking the same moors, and just maybe in the distance the weather is on the change. Night and day, but each magical in its own way.

What does it all *mean*?

It means there’s a remarkable amount of talent under Kate and Henry’s roof. Someone should make a documentary now in case one of them gets famous.

Goes well with…

Winter. Whisky. Rain. Blasted heaths. Curried parsnip soup.

Release Date:

Today!

Might suit people who like…

Pink Island records. Individual voices. Musical craftsmanship. Cottage industry magicians who would gratefully accept your tenner.

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