Stolen Moments
The banjo has got some bad press over the years and not without some justification. However, prepare to have your prejudices on this score reduced to rubble: Alison Brown is a wizard and a true star and Stolen Moments is a cracker of an album from start to finish.
Niall Stokes
The banjo has got some bad press over the years and not without some justification. However, prepare to have your prejudices on this score reduced to rubble: Alison Brown is a wizard and a true star and Stolen Moments is a cracker of an album from start to finish. And, boy, how it starts. ‘The Sound Of Summer Running’ is a superb example of ensemble musicianship at its best: John R.Burn’s exultant, jazzy piano provides the highlight here, but the arrangement gives equal space to mandolin, fiddle and Brown’s banjo, to wonderful effect. Leavened by some delicious chord shifts, it’s a potent statement of intent, on which the album almost unerringly delivers.
What follows is arguably even stronger. Propelled by a rhythm section of Brown’s husband Gary West on bass and drummer Kenny Bush that plays it smart throughout, ‘The Magnificent Seven’ is a kind of sophisticated newgrass hoedown. Co-written by Brown with Irish guitarist and Solas member John Doyle it comes in three movements, developed over a day’s improvisation and refinement in the studio. Sam Bush’s exuberant mandolin leads off here in a helter skelter style, with Stuart Duncan on fiddle the next to take up the running. However, even these virtuoso turns are upstaged by Brown’s brilliant, cascading banjo part and Burn’s insistent, mesmeric piano turn. And when they come together at the end, well, this is surely how it should be done!
Much of the album is instrumental and yet there is scarcely a moment’s let-up in the intensity. The gorgeous ‘Carrokeel’ is based on a Gregorian chant, with Sean Egan blowing marvellous low whistle over thrillingly evocative, jazzy piano chords. The romping ‘I’m Naked (And I’m Going To Glasgow)’ starts with the Grey Goose Jig before rolling out a set of reels that would have a dead man dancing, mandolin giving way to banjo and then to piano before a heart-stopping, triumphant re-entry for the banjo that powers a gloriously conceived and intricately realized track to a climax.
There are a number of guest vocal appearances that provide the record with a bit of useful additional light and shade. The Indigo Girls sing Paul Simon’s ‘Homeward Bound’ and they do a fine job, on what is a lovely track. Beth Nielsen’s take on Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Angel’ is less compelling. Mary Chapin Carpenter’s version of Boo Hewerdine’s ‘The Prayer Wheel’ reminds me greatly of Midnight Well, which is a compliment. But the pick of the four is Andrea Zorn’s haunting reading of Jim Rooney’s classic-sounding ballad ‘One Morning In May’.
It is the instrumentals, however, that make Stolen Moments such a hugely special experience. Warm, inventive, spirited and challenging by turn, it is one of the finest records I’ve heard in a long, long time. Alison Brown deserves your attention. In fact she deserves a lot more than that!
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