Post Description

Folk, singer-songwriter, traditional folk, Sheffield.

“Parlour Music” is a genre that has been much derided over the centuries. Its heyday was the Victorian era when many middle-class houses had pianos and many middle-class sons and daughters could sight-read piano scores to a high level, musical literacy being highly prized. Many parlour songs are cloying, nationalistic, pompous and irritating to modern ears, but nestling among the dross there are many shining gems to be found. The early folk song collectors despised all these songs as fakery, usurping the place of the naturally occurring folk songs of the rural working class.

This album is not a collection of parlour songs in the technical sense of the term, but it does seek to awaken the sound of the old, well loved, slightly out of tune domestic piano and to reunite it with (or introduce it to) songs that might feel glad of the acquaintance.

I have been toying with the idea of a piano-based folk album for many years. Although I consider myself a competent-at-best pianist (my sight reading would certainly not have passed muster in the middle class Victorian parlour described above) I adore playing piano and have probably spent as many thousands of hours trying to get to grips with it as I have the fiddle or the guitar. In particular I love using it to accompany slow, sentimental ballads such as several of the tracks on this album. Lockdown brought a gaping hole in my schedule and I was fortunate enough to be awarded an Arts Council England “Developing Your Creative Practice” grant to help explore (with the band) ways of approaching folk song repertoire with the piano front and centre. In 2022 the Remnant Kings returned to touring but Richard Warren was unable to join us so M.G. Boulter took over guitar duties, bringing with him the sublime sounds of the pedal steel guitar. Of course this instrument was not invented until about hundred years after the heyday of the Victorian parlour song, but Matt’s sensitive use of it as an orchestral bedrock for these songs was the final piece in the jigsaw, and we were keen to get into the studio to get it down on tape.

Parlour Ballads was produced by long time collaborator Andy Bell and features The Remnant Kings – Sam Sweeney, Ben Nicholls, Rob Harbron, Sally Hawkins & M G Boulter. Paul Sartin was a key member of the Remnant Kings for ten years and was involved in the early developments of this album and we can hear his influence across the record.

Tracks:
01. On One April Morning
02. Bonny Bunch of Roses
03. Clock O’ Clay
04. Merry Mountain Child
05. Mortal Cares
06. Oggie Man
07. Old Brown’s Daughter
08. Prentice Boy
09. Danny Deever
10. Rose of Allendale
11. London Waterman

Staat er compleet op, 10% pars mee gepost. Met zeer veel dank aan de originele poster. Laat af en toe eens weten wat je van het album vindt. Altijd leuk, de mening van anderen. Oh ja, MP3 doe ik niet aan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24wZuSfFTn4