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1 From My Window 4.02
2 The Holland Mistress 3.47
3 Two Year Winter 3.32
4 Night-Time Jigs 3.52
5 The Story of our Darling Grace 2.46
6 The Lover's Ghost 3.36
7 Hey Away 4.08
8 Lost Chances 3.36
9 Diddling Set 4.06
10 The Two Brothers 3.32
11 The Haymakers 3.31
11 Bide 2.17
Features a wide variety of traditional British songs, contemporary covers and songs by Bill herself, all stamped with the individual approach and interpretation for which Bill has become well-known.
Two Year Winter is Bill’s third studio album, and the first that she has produced herself. The title track is a heartbreaking song with a beautiful piano and string arrangement, and was written and arranged by Bill and Anne Hills, an American folk singer who is renowned for her collaborative work with many musicians including Tom Paxton and Michael Smith.
The album sits somewhere between Turn to Me and Panchpuran with its mix of arrangements and solo songs. These include The Lover’s Ghost with its jazzy feel and flügelhorn soloing, a world music-flavour on The Story of Our Darling Grace, the delicate instrumentation of Belfast songwriter Eamon Friel’s From My Window, the pounding beat and humour of the folk-rock-inspired Diddling Set, to the intimate piano and voice on Pete Morton’s thought provoking song The Two Brothers.
Like Bill’s previous CD’s, Two Year Winter was recorded at Brian Bedford's (Artisan) Park Head Studio, and was mixed by Mark Whyles. Musicians featured include Miranda Sykes (Firebrand, Robb Johnson Trio) on double bass and harmony vocals, Paul Jayasinha on flügelhorn and 'cello, Stewart Hardy (ex-The John Wright Band) on fiddle, Sarah Wright on flute, Keith Angel (The John Tams Band, The Angel Brothers) on percussion, and David Wood on guitar. The album was mastered in Nashville and is also being distributed to territories outside the UK by Nashville-based Compass Records.
Two Year Winter - reviews.
World Music Central (September 2003 edition) | Taplas (December 2003/January 2004 edition)
Independent On Sunday (20th July 2003)
The Times (2nd August 2003) | The Word (16th August 2003)
The Essex Chronicle (28th July 2003)
Anyone who has followed the progress of Bill Jones in the last few years will be well aware of the purity of her voice, her refreshing treatments of British traditional and other songs, and her disdain for the Folk Police. She is instantly recognisable as someone who is developing her own niche in the music.
The new CD finds her solo and with a talented crew of like-minded musicians around her. For example the title track sees her collaborating with Anne Hills and makes use of a fine arrangement that showcases the work of Shanti Paul Jayasinha on cello along with Stewart Hardy’s violin and Sarah Wright’s flute. In another joint effort with Hills, <>Lost Chances, the music is stripped down to accordion and cello with Jones’ voice clear and to the fore. The tune is a borrowing from the Irish and adds poignancy to the lyrics.
Her own version of the story of Grace Darling, the Northumbrian heroine, marries another Irish tune to her words and an arrangement that recalls some of the Swarbricking of classic Fairport days. An interesting percussive edge is supplied by Keith Angel who plays djembe and shaker. A further development is apparent on the Diddling Set, a group of tunes featuring her "diddling" or lilting or mouth music - whatever you wish to call it. She is as sure voiced on this as on any other material and her singing is further enhanced by some flugel horn and flute.
Finally all jigs don’t need to be flat out string busting affairs do they? She takes Night-time Jigs and slows down the pace, giving the lovely Irish and Northumbrian tunes space in which to be heard.
If you haven’t heard her then this is a good place to start, if you have you won’t need further recommendation.
Paul Donnelly
Taplas ( December 2003/January 2004 edition)
Observing an artist mature and develop is a fascinating process and I’ve been watching (and listening to) Bill Jones, both on record and live, since she launched herself onto the British folk scene, a few years ago. That she has matured and developed is beyond question. Previous albums, while very satisfying, have always just fallen short of their full potential, but not so, this time. Two Year Winter cracks those intangible shortcomings. It’s the album she has been trying to make for a while and she has finally found the confidence to do it.
Accompanying herself variously on piano, accordion and whistles, Bill has chosen a varied selection of songs, both from the tradition (the jaunty The Holland Mistress being among the stand-out tracks) and from modern day writers, like American Anne Hills, who provides the sombre title track, as well as Lost Chances. Other highlights include Pete Morton’s The Two Brothers and her own poignant tribute to Victorian heroine Grace Darling.
Bill has assembled a bunch of accomplished musicians to back her and, while all deserve mention, particularly impressive are guitarist David Wood and Paul Jayasinha, who contributes very tasty cello and flugelhorn.
This album is, without doubt, her best yet.
Keith Hudson
Independent on Sunday(20th July 2003)
As the walls of major-label Jericho come crashing down, there is fiddling to be heard amid the swirling dust and fluttering notes from Robbie Williams’s EMI advance. It’s the sound of the Young British Folk cottage industry enjoying itself and, relatively speaking, coining it. Bill Jones (it’s a she) may lack the vocal loveliness of Kate Rusby, the musical wilding of Eliza Carthy and the homely strangeness of, say, Charlotte Greig, but she’s got something. This is her third proper album and her best.
The arrangements are nothing to write home about, but they work. They are constructed sparsely around the core tones of piano, accordion and guitar, between which branches Jones’s voice is stretched thin and sparkling as a morning cobweb. There’s a hint of magic in those wet strings. Check out the title track, a song written by Jones’s friend, the American folkie Anne Hills. It’s an extended metaphor about grief, in which landscape and weather stand in for feelings and the straightness of the symbolism is curved by the simplicity of its treatment. Most pleasant.
It is hard to escape the suspicion that Jones arrived a little late at the folk babes ball.
By the time she turned up two years ago with a "BBC Radio 2 Folk award" for best newcomer under her arm, the seats at the top table were already taken by Eliza Carthy, Kate Rusby and Cara Dillon. Yet Two Year Winter suggests that she deserves a place among them.
She mixes arrestingly arranged songs by contemporary writers into a traditional template, delivered with impressive poise. Though not much of a writer herself yet, she is fast becoming one of the finest interpreters of her generation.
Nigel Williamson
Bill (as in Belinda) Jones sports an unlikely background for a darling of the folk set. At college she studied jazz piano and began her performing life as a member of the orchesto-punk group The Wise Wound. In another world this kind of brew would have produced a Liz Fraser or Tracey Thorn but a chance encounter with her tutor’s folk collection set her spiralling off in a different direction.
Blessed with a voice that demands attention and a razor sharp eye for a good tune, Bill Jones has released two heart wrenchingly seductive albums in the last four years. Her debut Turn to Me was a study in classic simplicity with paired down arrangements that fully earned the BBC’s best newcomer trophy at their annual folk awards. Her second, Panchpuran, pushed past the musical boundaries of the first introducing themes of race and identity taking inspiration from her mother’s upbringing in India and difficult integration into this country.
Now her third studio album sees her rummaging through folk’s musical dressing-up box for the sound that she feels most comfortable in. As so what we have here in Two Year Winter is a stab at Capercaillie-style Gaelic mouth music, some piano fronted ballads and a brace of traditional songs.
In one sense it's something of a retreat, more like her debut than Panchpuran, Jones has taken on production duties herself for the first time and while less musically challenging the album has an appealing delicacy. Two Year Winter is a collection that benefits from being given more than superficial attention, with each successive encounter revealing the subtleties of the individual tracks.
Hey Away on the surface is a gentle lullaby, but if folk music does anything well it cossets horrific stories in sublime melodies. Here an excited wife waits for her husband’s return from the sea her words unfolding the reality of her life as she forgets her sleeping audience. Her lover’s portrayal in the song moves seamlessly from handsome partner through lad-about-town, to abusive husband in as many versions. It’s a tribute to Jones’ well thought out approach that the song manages to avoid feeling forced or gimmicky.
Thankfully it’s not all doom and gloom chez Jones and cheering up the tales of wrecked ships, spurned lovers and hangings there are healthy smatterings of fast cars, brave women and on more than one occasion some good old fashioned sex. An excellent window into the world of Belinda Jones where not everything is as it first appears.
John Innes
The Essex Chronicle(28th July 2003)
Englishness gets rediscovered in the summer. Refreshing beers on village greens, country fairs and picnics by the sea define a pastoral patriotism but nothing is as quintessentially English as the music of Bill Jones.
Forget the folk stereotype of bearded men in sandals shouting "hey nonny, nonny" - Bill is soft-faced songbird, Belinda, and Two Year Winter is her third album of gorgeous songs. Like James Yorkston last year, Bill Jones widens the appeal of folk music. Two Year Winter blends traditional British songs, modern covers and Bill's own songs into a charming, enchanting whole.
Bill's vocal and piano performance on the gentle tale of a lost childhood, From My Window is instantly appealing. She has a disarming style which is enhanced by Miranda Sykes on backing and double bass. The Holland Mistress is a more traditional song about a stitched-up suitor with Bill breezing through the ditty in typically life-affirming style and Night-time Jigs jollies along to her whistle and accordion playing.
Jones has such warmth and depth of talent it's easy to see why she was voted best new folk singer in 2001.On the carefree Diddling Set she playfully combines three traditional tunes to stompingly great effect, while The Haymakers is a seasonal warning about romping in the hay set to the tune of Mac's Fancy. Along with lighthouse tale, Story of Our Darling Grace, the beautiful Arab-Israeli allegory, The Two Brothers, and the breathtaking piano finale, Bide, it’s fantastic and accessible folk for everyone.
Don Blandford