Brandywine Bridge - An English Meadow (1978) {Kissing Spell}
Brandywine Bridge was a British folk group that released the albums The Grey Lady in 1977 and An English Meadow in 1978. The instrumentation features recorders, banjo, guitar, madolin, bodhran and other acoustic instruments along with male and female vocals. Members included Dave Grew along with brother and sister Stuart and Sheila Hague.
English trio Brandywine Bridge released An English Meadow in 1978. The album containes twelve original songs penned in the style of traditional English folk music. The arrangements are all-acoustic with Dave Grew, Stuart Hague, and Sheila Hague playing guitar, banjo, and mandolin, fiddle, recorder, concertina, bowed psaltery, spoons, and bells. Four songs are instrumental but most feature vocals. Sheila Hague’s fragile voice (sounding a bit like Sandy Denny’s) is featured most often and most prominently, although her two colleagues handle their share of vocal duties, proving themselves to be competent singers in the unpolished and rough-hewn style typical other early 70’s male British folk-rockers (Jansch, Hart, Cockerham, etc.). The band does do a fine job of evoking the traditional styles, although their reliance upon cheery major key melodies seems at odds with the darker, lyrical content (which includes songs about poaching, war, witches, and animal sacrifice. All in all, this is a very pleasant and well done album of English folk from the mid-70s but it remains purely in the folk realm, without ever venturing into psych-folk, prog-folk, or the like.
Rare UK folk album finally issued on CD. This lost British folk album shares the same communal spirit of traditional American folk, as it tends to be more universal than personal whilst retaining strong elements of traditional Celtic/British jigs & reels. Recorded in 1978 this trad folk act at no time gives up its distinctly British musical flavor. Nice use of mandolin's, treble recorders, bodhran's, fiddles, & excellent male/female vocals.
|
