Jackie Oates - The Joy of Living

The Guardian 80

(ECC)

An album so wintry – the seventh from the English singer – makes an odd fit for high summer, but it’s a contradictory affair throughout, mixing songs that mourn Oates’s late father with others celebrating the birth of her daughter. John Lennon’s primal Mother is a brave cover choice, but Oates’s unaffected delivery, set to a sparse drone, lives up to the song’s harrowing demands. Elsewhere, the West Country singer tumbles through Edwardian lullabies and playground chants, Darwin Deez’s Constellations (given a girl choir), and traditional songs shared with her father – Bill Caddick’s Unicorns; Hamish Henderson’s Freedom Come All Ye.

The last is a lush piece of chamber folk with a stellar accompanying cast, but much of the album is spartan – voice, piano or guitar – recorded at home by producer and accomplice Simon Richmond, who understands ambience and knows when to leave a downbeat piece like Spring Is Coming Soon alone. The title track, by Ewan MacColl, is a bracing celebration of wild peaks and hills, being “drunk on air”. The varied material and Oates’s unfussy, melodic vocals pull us between sorrow and delight. A personal, affecting collection.

Sun Aug 19 07:00:14 GMT 2018

The Guardian 80

(ECC Records)

Folk songs are often about desperately sad ancient stories, but occasionally they are about newer experiences. In January 2016, Jackie Oates had her first baby, Rosie, amid complications: both mother and child contracted sepsis in hospital. Simultaneously, Oates’ beloved father, a man who steeped his family in folk music culture, became suddenly ill, and died of the same condition five days later. Jackie and Rosie got better. Few album titles have had such immediate resonance.

Since her 2003-2007 part-time tenure in Rachel Unthank & the Winterset, Jackie Oates has been well-known in traditional folk circles, but has never quite had the acclaim she deserves. Her voice recalls many contemporary female folk voices: sweet, pretty, unadorned, the kind of vocal that could disappear on the breeze. What she sings about, however, gives it gravity.

Fri Aug 24 07:30:07 GMT 2018