This month I thought I’d try to put down in words quite why making traditional music has been such a headache for me over the years.

In fact, it occurred to me today that I have written an extraordinarily small number of songs in the last 10 years, and a large part of that has been that so much of my songwriting energy has been taken up in trying to record and perform English traditional music in a way which, to me, doesn’t sound shit. It has taken up so much time in trial and error. Mainly error. And I feel I’m only really starting to make progress on this.

First, let’s just quickly get the whole folk vs traditional thing out of the way. (more…)

“Well, they sparkle now, okay?”

Things that I want to write Eulogize This articles on tend to fall into a number of categories. There’s ‘things that I think readers might not be aware of. There’s also ‘things that readers are probably familiar with, but here is hopefully a new perspective on why they are so great’. And then there’s perhaps my favourite: ‘things that I think are masterpieces, but that have attracted so much hate that there is a social pressure to casually trash them’. And here comes another in the latter category. (more…)