O’Hooley and Tidow – Silent June

If I had to Categorise O’Hooley and Tidow’s music it wouldn’t be an easy thing to do: our suspects some sort of background in traditional music, but their songs are far removed in style, and Belinda O’Hooley’s piano gives everything a very contemporary feel. Several tracks feature a string quartet or Anna Esslemont’s violin playing, and we are talking violin here rather than fiddle, for the instrumental interludes in some of the songs suggest Michael Nyman or the Kronos Quartet rather than anything traditional.

I love the imagery: Flight of the Petrel warns of the coming storm, moving from the sea to our drowning society and its ills, with motorway queues like salmon fighting their way upriver; Too Old to Dream is stark with music and memory in old age; Que Sera evokes the execution of Edith Cavell, amidst the other horrors of the First World War - God has gone and left us to it ....

The only traditional track (apart from Banjololo, a rather throwaway, 30 second children’s song) is a fine version of the Irish emigrant piece Spancil Hill, with accompaniment by James Dumbleton on guitar and Jackie Oates on octave fiddle, giving a different feel to the rest of the album. (Spancil Hill is obviously flavour of the month – see review of The Roving Crows!) Rounding off the CD is One More Xmas, a poignant song of nostalgia and domestic discord, and then Cold and Stiff, an acapella song of Chumbawamba style rebellion. Great stuff. Category? Put it somewhere between the McGarrigles and Kurt Weill.
Chris Beaumont
NMCD32 No Masters Co-operative, PO Box 209, Leeds LS2 9BJ 08456 430934 www.nomasters.co.uk www.chumba.com