Folk album of the monthMusicReview(Spinster)
Elizabeth LaPrelle of Anna & Elizabeth anchors the four-piece behind this comforting, intimate album of a cappella harmonies and Appalachian ballads
US four-piece Doran identify themselves as a freak folk collective exploring “tradition and innovation in song, myth and ceremony”. Anchoring them is singer/banjo player Elizabeth LaPrelle from brilliant duo Anna & Elizabeth, whose experimental approach to ancient songs has always augmented their raw power. She’s joined by ethnomusicologist Brian Dolphin, and Channing Showalter and Annie Schermer of the performance art group West of Roan.
For a month over winter, they went weapons-grade hippy together, recording in an attic, burying their bodies in leaves and doing tarot to see what weirdness emerged. And what did was this surprisingly comforting, intimate album, perfect for darkening nights when music can offer warmth. Consisting predominantly of original songs that nevertheless sound as if they have been around for centuries, Doran’s bedrock is strong a cappella harmonies influenced by eastern European chants and Appalachian ballads. The harmonies knit together so effortlessly you’d assume they were being delivered by siblings. The lyrics, however, hold deeper, stranger qualities, as in the beautiful Old Moon: “I am going where the birds praise the fallen sky / River cuts to the bone / It runs dark and it runs dry.”
The instrumentals have a similarly enveloping magic. Arbegen is a gorgeous minor-key tune led by two fiddles, named after a Romanian town with a gothic basilica. Bonefolder marries plucked strings and rougher textures to create something that ultimately ends up sounding disarmingly pretty. Solo vocals also offer different feelings to the songs: Dolphin’s sweet, high, quavery tenor suggesting echoes of indie trio Yo La Tengo, LaPrelle’s versatile tones the solidity of a drone at times, the beauty of an ancient wise woman at others. Played in one go and listened to closely, the album is a moving, immersive experience.
Also out this week
Nora Brown began playing the banjo at six; at 16, her second album, Sidetrack My Engine (Jalopy), is a raw, confident set of songs, recorded in a stone cellar in Brooklyn with minimal accompaniment. Its mood recalls the early albums of Cat Power as much as Harry Smith’s field recordings. Granny’s Attic’s The Brickfields (self-released) is an uplifting set of English folk dances and gentle improvisations – and if you like concertina player Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, he’s also brilliant on Zakia Sewell’s series about British multicultural identity and folklore, My Albion, now on BBC Sounds. British guitarist Henry Parker’s Lammas Fair (Cup & Ring) is a more reverb-heavy take on old music, his early love of heavy metal informing its American-slanted sound.
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