Martin Carthy, English folk pioneer and national treasure, celebrates his 70th birthday at the Royal Festival Hall next weekend, and here’s a two disc career overview.
The hypnotic, chunky, acoustic guitar style arrives fully-formed on the earliest tracks, from ’65 and ’66, pulsating round the purloined ur-folk licks on which Paul Simon and Bob Dylan built their breakthroughs.
Psychically sympathetic modal duets with the fiddler Dave Swarbrick remain timelessly intense.
By a 2004 reading of Famous Flower Of Serving Men, ten minutes of head-drone render contemporary acid folk obsolete, and Carthy’s once reedy vocal has a Methuselaic authority, his playing flowing like blood.
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John Robins, Comedian
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