“Specially selected 15 track compilaAon / IntroducAon note from Eliza
Carthy / Features Jon Boden, John Spiers, Ben Ivitsky, Lucy Farrell and Sam
Sweeney / Track by track informaAon. Describing herself simply as a ‘modern
English musician’ Eliza Carthy, has been touring on and off since the age of
fourteen and first appeared on record in 1990 as a member of The Mrs Ackroyd
Band alongside such notables as Les Barker, June Tabor and her father MarAn
Carthy. AYer two collaboraAve recordings with Nancy Kerr, she released her first
solo album Heat, Light & Sound, for Topic Records in 1996, a selecAon of
tradiAonal songs, two of which open this new selecAon of her work which is
drawnen Arely from her solo recordings for the label and closing with a track
from 2017’s Big Machine album.
This last record saw her fronAng the 12-piece Wayward Band; it was an album
which wowed criAcs and none more so than Mojo which praised her for whipping
“her characterisAc fondness for adventure into ever grander and more colourful
direcAons.” To describe Eliza Carthy as prolific simply doesn’t do jusAce to
her Areless touring and recording which
aside from her solo work includes recordings with parents MarAn Carthy and Norma
Waterson in Waterson:Carthy, and acclaimed albums with each of them (The Gi<
and The Moral of the Elephant), plus the Imagined Village and countless others,
most recently teaming up Tim Ericksen and with fellow fiddlers Bella Hardy, Lucy
Farrell and Kate Young.
Eliza has oYen given ‘trad folk’ a radical makeover like the track ‘Clark
Saunders’ from her Topic debut is a wonderfully true, unaccompanied delight;
while the amalgam of ‘No Man’s Jig’/’Hanoverian Dance’/’Three
Jolly Sheepskins’ from 2002’s Anglicana shows off her acute instrumental
skills alongside the likes of Jon Boden, John Spiers and Ben Ivitsky. Neither
track would offend the purists. Neither should her version of the tradiAonal
ballad ‘Willow Tree’, also taken from Anglicana, rendered in the lazy style
of Hoagy Carmichael. It was with the two CD collecAon Red Rice in 1998 that
Eliza Carthy really announced herself as a songwriter but also as an innovator.
An IntroducCon To Eliza Carthy may be a mere snapshot of Eliza
Carthy’s cram-packed career, focussing as it does on her individual
recordings for Topic, but it certainly underlines the indelible impression
she
has made – not just on folk music – but on modern music per se. Like any
good ‘introducAon’ it will also leave you wanAng more. ”
