Search - Alasdair Roberts :: Farewell Sorrow

With Appendix Out, Alasdair Roberts just gets better

05/02/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"With each record, Scottish singer/songwriter Alasdair Roberts comes closer to the hallowed bone of his native folk music. The style that Americans like Will Oldham have long worked to master is in his blood and soul. His first three records were released under the name Appendix Out but he now seems to want to be known by his given name. This is fine, as the two records he's released under his name are his best to date. Farewell Sorrow improves on The Crook of My Arm by bringing in diverse instrumental flavors, but even more so by finding a new dynamic range in the songwriting. Never before has there been a song like "I Went Hunting" in Roberts' catalog. Elsewhere, the fluid pop of "When a Man's In Love He Feels No Cold," finesses his ballad style into something new. At the same time, his vocal abilities have reached a new expressiveness, making this the best Alasdair Roberts collection under any name. Go back and listen to The Rye Bears a Poison (his first album), then listen to this again. You will hear an artist who has grown, matured, and gotten better at his craft."

I'm not sure what the other reviewer is getting at...

R. Conroy | Pittsburgh, PA | 04/29/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Although I prefer The Crook of My Arm, I don't view this record as a disappointment. My only complaint with this record, if any, would lie in the fact that, to me, it sounds too much like his first solo album. On these records, Ali Roberts applies the idiosyncratic style that he used in interpreting traditional folk compositions on The Crook of My Arm to his own compositions, which sometimes borrow from traditional material. Nothing about his record is far removed from any of his earlier work. If you like Appendix Out and like The Crook of My Arm, I can't see any reason why you wouldn't appreciate this fine, consistent effort."

Just a beautiful neo-folk album

Robert Moore | Chicago, IL USA | 06/07/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Unlike previous reviewers, this album represents my first exposure to Alasdair Roberts. I've read enough to know that he headed a band called Appendix Out, but I've not heard any of their stuff. If any of their any work is nearly as good as this (though scanning reviews of the various reviewing sites has most identifying this one as his best album) then I'll certainly hunt up more of his stuff, both solo and with his band.



There have been various attempts over time to bring the folk tradition to a rock audience. Bob Dylan, Steeleye Span, the Byrds, Fairport Convention, Richard Thompson, and a host of others have traveled down this path before. This is the only attempt of which I am aware to do the same with the Scottish folk tradition (I could easily be mistaken). What is striking to me is how Roberts does not try to do this by bringing in electric instruments to any great degree. One can occasionally hear an electric guitar (as in "I Walked Abroad in an Evil Hour"), but even then all "plugged" instruments are kept pretty far back in the mix.



But the thing that I find most compelling about the album, in addition to the wonderfully evocative songs, is Roberts's plaintive and melancholic voice. I love the way he strips his voice of all vibrato and affectation. He sings throughout as purely and unadorned as possible, but neglecting along the way no syllable or consonant or vowel. This has to be the most clearly sung record since the hey day of Chuck Berry (who sang so clearly that many biased people refused to believe that he was black, since their world view did not have room for a black man who could speak that clearly). I have a tiny hearing problem (the result of a firecracker thrown at the back of my head when I was twelve) in my upper register, which means that I sometimes struggle with certain consonants and therefore miss some lyrics (I hear the music just find, but I miss a few of the words). There are very, very few albums where I am not driven to the lyrics sheet. But the very first line of "Farewell Sorrow," the first song on the album, is so clearly sung, with every word sung with crystalline clarity and precision that I instantly knew that I wouldn't have to look at the lyric sheet (and in typing that I just realized that I don't even know if the album came with one, so little need is there for one). Shane MacGowan when with the Pogues similarly paid as much attention to words. If you listen to their version of "The Band Played Waltzing Maltilda," he tortures and explores every nuance of every word. But Roberts is even more meticulous than MacGowan.



All of the songs on the album are originals, but they also bespeak a knowledge and deep respect for a tradition. Many contemporary folk albums can sounds like perversions or parodies of a tradition rather than a natural outgrowth. These songs do honor to Scottish folk music. They may have been written in the twenty-first century, but one can easily imagine them sounding very much in place in the nineteenth, except for some of the instrumentation.



Last of all, I'd like to say that my usual practice is never to review an album until I have listened to it at least ten times. Usually I alternate from one album to another, only gradually building up to the ten listenings (this also explains why none of my CD reviews are one- or two- star reviews--if something is that bad I can't get past two or three listens. I got this album on Monday June 4 and am reviewing it on June 7. I just kept listening to it over and over. Needless to say, I strongly recommend this to anyone who loves either traditional or contemporary folk."