Night Visiting: reviews

After four years establishing her name through live performances, Bella Hardy has finally released her debut album. All but three of its 11 songs are traditional (not always obvious from the track list – Dog and Gun turns out to be a jaunty version of The Mountain Streams Where The Moorcocks Crow on which Bella's voice and violin are doubled by Emma Hardy and Emily Askew, respectively).

Although she is accompanied by an impressive congregation of new folk performers, Bella has kept arrangements simple and sparse: the playing is tasteful throughout and always enhances and complements the song (try Chris Sherburn's concertina on Young Edmund, for example.)

It has to be said that the choice of songs is on the surface unsurprising (All Things Are Silent, Molly Vaughan, Searching For Lambs etc), but all the versions are valid and often intriguing – a new take on things we think we know well. It is in fact refreshing to find someone prepared to accept that this core repertoire exists because the songs are strong and worth singing.

The two of the songs which won't be familiar are both originals. Three Black Feathers is an eerie night-visiting song, and effectively the title track of the album. Alone, Jane is the story of Jane Eyre from a different angle: belated advice to the heroine and a sly rebuke to Charlotte as author.

That leaves Heart Hill, one of Kristina Olsen's most haunting song-sketches. Like all the songs on the album, this benefits from a performance by a singer who has clearly made the effort to get inside the songs and live them as she sings them.

The album closes with its longest track – a sweeping take on the Scottish ballad Bonny Susie Cleland whose narrative Bella astutely links to the "honour killings" which make all too frequent appearances in newspapers. This, I think, is the secret of the album's success – Bella Hardy sings folk songs not as interesting museum pieces but as human artworks with enduring validity – or, as she says in Three Black Feathers, "one man's story Within a tale of many men".

Quietly impressive, it's an album which makes one want to hear more...and that is precisely what a debut album should do!

« Return