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1
William Taylor Sample MP3 4.15
2 The Tale of Tam Lin Sample MP3
5.26
3 The Barley and the Rye 3.54
4 Panchpuran 3.52
5 Silver Whistle & Low Down in the
Broom 3.59
6 Rocking the Cradle Sample MP3 4.18
7 The Hexham Lad & The Blackleg
Miner 2.59
8 Loving Hannah 5.12
9 Tuney Song Set 4.10
Produced by Karen Tweed (The Poozies, Swap), Panchpuran features a wide variety of songs and styles drawn from the folk tradition of the British Isles.
As with Turn to Me, recording took place at Brian Bedford's Park Head Studio. Musicians featured on the CD include Coope, Boyes & Simpson on harmony vocals, Kathryn Tickell on fiddle, Kellie While (E2K, the Albion Band) on harmony vocals, Paul Jayasinha on 'cello and flügelhorn, Keith Angel (The John Tams Band) on percussion, and David Wood on guitar. Also listen out for a brass band from County Durham on one track, and a beautiful Finnish string quartet backing two songs.
Panchpuran is a Hindi expression that literally means five spices, but is used in the title track, written by Bill, to mean many different things all mixed up together. Not only does this word apply well to the CD and Bill’s musical influences, but also to Bill’s family background: Bill’s Mum is from India, and the song is about the trials of adjusting to life in a country which is not your homeland.
FRoots
(May 2001 edition)
In
the cold light of day the reaction to Bill’s first album Turn to Me may have been a tad
overblown. Her
Best Newcomer gong at the BBC Folk Awards was richly deserved but as
warmly
promising as it was, Turn to Me
was
essentially a marker, Bill’s calling card for a career in its infancy.
It
promised plenty but the sense of anticipation it aroused may well have
hung
heavily over its successor.
Now
it’s here and it’s immediately obvious that Bill Jones is the genuine
article,
a gifted performer of mainly traditional song whose relative
inexperience or
schooling in the conventional treatment of this music enables her to
take risks
without appearing to do so. She tackles, for example, the exacting
emotions
wrought by the epic ballad Tam Lin, for which she has written
an
entirely new tune to which is applied a formidable piano and string
quartet
arrangement that strips the ballad of its dramatic intensity and turns
it
instead into a far darker, more intimate tale.
She
also encompasses a range of material and style not even hinted at on Turn to Me A bright interpretation
of William
Taylor, lifted to the skies by the vocal muscle of Coope, Boyes and
Simpson, is an enticing statement of intent to get us off the mark.
From a
sensitive treatment of The Barley & The Rye featuring Kathryn
Tickell on fiddle and Kellie While on harmony vocals, to a
vigorous
brass attack on Blackleg Miner, the thoughtful sense of variety
scarcely
lets you down. The album constantly surprises, but there is none of the
wilful
perversity you often encounter when artists are deliberately trying to
be
different. The easy charm she uses to relate the bitter sweet Rocking
the
Cradle over drums and flugelhorn is indicative of a completely
natural
talent.
The
track which most coolly reveals her instinctive daring, though, is the
title
one Panchpuran, a self-written story of her Indian aunt’s
painful
emigration from India to England. A chance for her to show off her
worldly
credentials and bang in a few tablas, perhaps? Not a bit of it. Instead
she
turns it into the form of an unaccompanied traditional ballad in which
the starkly
factual lyric assumes a forbidding, deeply moving quality. On the face
of it a
brave, potentially foolhardy strategy, but you just know it seemed to
her
simply the most obvious way of tackling such a personal song. And when
you hear
it you know she’s right.
This
is an album of pace and shade and considered structure, and if there is
a
miscalculation it’s the inclusion of the old Dusty Springfield hit Goin’
Back, the one track which doesn’t sit naturally in the general
scheme of
things and leaves you suspicious it’s there for effect rather than
substance.
But with Karen Tweed giving a match-winning performance at the
production desk, the rest is spot on, relegating Turn
to Me to the role of warm-up act for the main event.
Colin Irwin
Mojo (May 2001 edition)
Voted
best newcomer at this year’s BBC Folk Awards, Jones follows last year’s
home-grown debut Turn to Me
with a Karen
Tweed- produced album based on the broader ranges of the British
tradition.
Jones
may inevitably be pigeonholed as another surfer on the wave that swept
Eliza
Carthy and Kate Rusby before us but, despite the predominance of
traditional
material, her reference points are very, very different. A relative
latecomer
to folk song, she’s drawn not by bloodlines but the lyrical intensity
of
ballads and, fearless of the folk police, reinvents sacred cows like Tam
Lin, William Taylor and Stór Mo Chroí with
new tunes and startling
arrangements. Paradoxically, while she decorates the English tradition
with
jazz, classical and - in the case of Blackleg Miner, - a brass
band, she
delivers the story of her Indian aunt’s immigration to Britain in a
pure but
affecting unaccompanied traditional style. For good measure, she tops
it all
off with a string quartet version of the old Carole King/Dusty
Springfield
standard Goin’ Back. A great leap from Turn
to Me
Colin Irwin
Observer Newspaper review (6th May 2001)
Blessed
with a larkish, unsullied voice, Belinda (Bill) Jones has become folk’s
new
darling over the past year. Following a plain-spun debut, this second
album
adds a string quartet and brass to her piano and squeezebox to good
effect.
It’s Jones’s flawless vocals that command attention, especially on the
a
cappella title track, a moving tribute to her Anglo-Indian heritage.
Elsewhere,
a cover version of Carole King’s Goin' Back augments the
customary tales
of bonny lovers and blackleg miners. A delight
Living Tradition review (May/June Edition 2001)
As
a classically trained musician, on piano and flute, Bill came late to
traditional music (despite a stint in her father’s ceilidh band and the
formation of a Morris side as part of her degree dissertation) but, as
another
young graduate of the influential Folkworks Summer Schools, she has
shown a
remarkable grasp and understanding of both traditional music and
descriptive,
story-telling songs. Her first solo gig was only in March ’99, but this
was
followed by a hectic round of touring and self-promotion, with Bill
rapidly
developing her talent and resulting in a well-received debut CD, Turn to Me, released in Springtime
2000. The
album won her the accolade of Best Newcomer in the BBC Folk Awards
2001, and it
was just reward for the promise and potential shown on that debut
recording by
a performer working hard to become established. So, twelve months down
the road
how does her second album fare?
Panchpuran (Hindi
for "a mix of five spices") has the same clarity and purity of voice
found on her first CD, but here it is stronger, carrying more authority
and
confidently handling some surprising, risky even, arrangements. The
material is
predominantly traditional, and what could be more so than Tam Lin,
but
Jones eschews its familiar tune, replacing it with a self-penned
powerful piano
and string quartet arrangement of her own which successfully alters the
tone
and intensity of this dark epic ballad. She uses a strong brass section
to
absolutely glorious effect on The Hexham Lad & The
Blackleg Miner
and her background jazz interest shines through with her piano,
flügelhorn, and
drums treatment of Rocking the Cradle - brave, fresh, but
extremely
effective treatments. Perhaps she just hasn’t been around long enough
yet to
realise how daring she’s being!
Coope,
Boyes and Simpson give support on an upbeat, soaring version of William
Taylor, Kathryn Tickell lends fiddle to The Barley & The Rye,
and Karen Tweed handles production with a very safe pair of hands. But
it is
the title track Panchpuran which is the biggest surprise, a
self-penned
unaccompanied ballad in traditional form, telling of her aunt’s move
from India
to England. A stark and very moving tale which is quite simply stunning.
Bill
Jones has garnered to herself a superb set of singers and musicians for
Panchpuran and has
succeeded in neatly
eclipsing her debut album, demonstrating a burgeoning new talent, and
completely validating her Horizon Award. She’s a newcomer no longer,
she has
most definitely arrived!
Ireland’s Hot Press Magazine
Unlike
many of contemporaries, Belinda Jones wasn’t so much steeped in folk
music as
more stumbled across it by accident. Classically trained as well as
having
played in jazz, indie and ceilidh bands, her unique approach has won
her huge
acclaim - over the water the BBC recently voted her best newcomer at
their 2001
Folk Awards. Panchpuran
builds on the
promise of her remarkable debut Turn
To Me,
but whereas that was a very simple affair, Jones now finds the great
and the
good of the folk world queuing up to work with her. Karen Tweed (who
produces), harmony singers Coope, Boyes & Simpson, Kathryn
Tickell and Kellie While are all featured. Wisely, all find
their
contributions kept to a tasteful minimum, serving as mere backing for
Jones’
piano, accordion and exquisite voice. Opening with the marvellously
feisty folk
tale William Taylor (boy jilts girl and runs away to sea, girl
dresses
up as boy and follows him, finds him, shoots him dead and is given a
top job in
the navy), the album features astonishing track after astonishing
track. Panchpuran
itself is a slightly wordy self-penned accappella number telling the
story of
her family’s Anglo-Indian roots, a nice contrast to the more jaunty
traditional
numbers such as The Barley and the Rye and Tuney Song Set.
Her
approach to the material is nothing if not inspired: the shockingly
bitter Blackleg
Miner ("join the union while you may, don’t wait till your dying
day,
for that may not be far away you dirty blackleg miner") is given added
bite by the colliery style brass band backing, while Rocking The
Cradle
becomes a fiery jazz blues number. She even drops in a heartstopping
cover of
Carole Kings Goin’ Back just to round things off. Not only one
of the
best folk albums you'll hear all year, but one of the best albums
period.
Phil Udell
Q magazine (August 2001)
Following
on the heels of Eliza Carthy and Kate Rusby, Bill (short for Belinda)
Jones is
the latest name charged with saving English folk music. Playing piano,
accordion and whistle and with the voice of the truest, most maidenly
kind that
might have been purpose-built for handling tales of cuckolded farmers
and blackleg
miners, it’s a task she is more than adequately equipped for. Although
hardly
likely to have them cheering down the Balls Pond Road, Panchpuran’s tasteful assembly of
mostly
traditional songs (Tam Lin and William Taylor included)
plus
sparing use of strings and brass band has a lovely, crisp airiness to
it that’s
as good as a lung-full of fresh air any day of the week. Special
indeed. ****