Rusty Shackle
The Raven, the Thief & the Hangman
(Get Folked Records)
★★★★★

RUSTY SHACKLE have chiselled this set of nine songs to loving perfection.

For two years, with laudable dedication, they've researched and gathered songs that tell stories from the edge of human existence without descending into miserablism or self-pity.

Although the fiddle, banjo and guitars are robust and purposeful, there is a pertinent poetic romance to their sound, corralled into disciplined cohesion by superb drumming.

Shackle are high octane, with a gusto that is infectious. Hanging Johnny, Sam Hall and the rousing Newport Rising — their own song about the 1839 Chartist-lead mining rebellion in which 24 people, twice the number of those killed at Peterloo, were massacred by a forewarned army — are invigorating.

But there's some respite from the dynamics offered by the hypnotic miner’s lullaby Coorie Doon: “Your daddy's howkin' coal, my darling/For his ain wee wean.” Miss not.

Ifriqiyya Electrique
Laylet el Booree
(Glitterbeat)
★★

THIS album's title translates as Night of the Madness and it references the centuries-old adorcism rituals of the Banga of Tozeur, an oasis in the west of Tunisia with stunning brickwork architecture most recently used as a location for Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Yet the album Night of the Madness is in fact a cultural appropriation by two Europeans — Francois Cambuzat and Gianna Greco of the post-punk Putan Club — who have co-opted, for the duration, three Banga support musicians.

The original, place-specific ritualistic and celebratory music — symbiotic with an ancient ceremony — has been re-packaged as “post-industrial ritual” with rock ’n’ roll at its nexus.

“Madness” it may very well be but these pastiches, neither fish nor fowl, are mere cultural voyeurism.

Africa’s unique musical identity needs such reinterpretation by Europeans like a hole in the head.

Ruth Notman and Sam Kelly
Changeable Heart
(Pure Records)
★★★★★

BRISTOLIAN Sam Kelly, who spearheads the Lost Boys, “kidnapped” Ruth Notman from Sheffield Uni’s medical school, where she'd absconded after a promising start as folk interpreter.

Kelly’s intuition was spot on and the pair must now be considered among the best of the genre.

Musically, this is folk at its most sophisticated and contemporary. Not only are the duo's voices alluring individually, they harmonise stunningly throughout. And their mastery of instruments — Notman on piano and accordion and Kelly on guitars — translates into the most delicate and beguiling accompaniments.

There are songs about love, from the ribaldry of The Cunning Cobbler to the spine-tingling singing in My Lagan Love, with its exquisite piano passages, and a desolate Ewan MacCall number School Days are Over, with its devastating line: “It’s time you were at the anthracite.”

Remarkable — and hats off to Damian O’Kane for the refined production.