Jack McNeill and Charlie Heys – The Northern Road

The sleeve photos show a couple variously posed in leafy glades and playing music by a rushing river: she has a fiddle and he has a guitar. Presumably these two are Jack and Charlie, but which one is which? Who knows? It’s him that does the singing though, in a voice which sometimes brings to mind Martin Simpson, and occasionally Denny Bartley (Last Night’s Fun) – by turns passionate, hard-edged, soulful or a bit quirky. The style is what might be described as a sort of acoustic soft-rock, the guitar sometimes strummed solidly, sometimes finger-picked, the fiddle soaring and weaving in harmony lines, and tunes that seem somewhat disdainful of too much melodic nicety.

All the songs, tunes and music, the sleeve tells, are written and performed by McNeill and Heys together with friends Tom Chapman, Helen Lancaster and Samantha Norman. Who does what exactly we’re not told: I detected some percussion at one point, perhaps a bass instrument doing something on another track, and an extra fiddle (or was it double tracking?) on one of the tunes.

The instrumental tracks are enjoyable, without falling obviously into any particular traditional style, and the songs, well, I could say more if I knew what they were about, but after a couple of hearings I am still none the wiser : the idiosyncratic style of delivery (shades of John Martyn?) has me defeated, and the sleeve details give no clues.

Interesting, and perhaps worth catching live at a festival somewhere, but a bit more information would definitely have helped.
Chris Beaumont
Fellside FECD 229 PO Box 40, Workington, Cumbria CA14 3GJ www.fellside.com