Chris Wood : ‘Albion’
Although Chris Wood is not a household name in the vein of contemporaries Billy Bragg or Bert Jansch, he is undoubtedly a master of his trade and this anthology, ‘Albion’, perfectly showcases an ability to weave lyricism and captivating songwriting into a rich narrative that is the hallmark of a rare talent.
This depth makes it tempting to perform a close reading of every song, but to avoid the risk of putting people off listening to the anthology itself, I’ll concentrate on a selection.
The eponymous track, ‘Albion’, (taken from album ‘The Lark Descending’), which Wood reveals in the sleeve notes is a true story, it opens with a staccato viola which is overlaid by another tentative and alluring viola part. The solemn effect perfectly preempts Wood’s lamenting vocals, and the first line, ‘Sunday morning, me and my son walk in the park, found a young man hanging from a tree’, reminds me of first listening to Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sun is Burning’ where a park stroll transforms into a shocking vision of nuclear holocaust. Unlike this epic prophecy however, ‘Albion’ is firmly rooted in the English folk tradition and focuses on depicting the mundane, giving it a more powerful, visceral effect.
As the song unfolds, Wood describes a group of mothers nearby, blissfully unaware as they plan their children’s future. This image is followed with the repeated line, ‘Albion, I’m homesick now though I live in the town I was born’. Written during the Thatcher era, the line conveys a profound sense of despondency and displacement. The title of the anthology is not then a great exultation of ‘Albion’, but an exploration of the complex and ever-changing relationship between personal and national identity that the artist has faced, over his many years and 11 studio albums.
Continuing this theme, ‘Mad John’ recounts the story of rural ‘peasant poet’ John Clare who slipped into insanity when his land was taken from him into private ownership. Taken from his last solo album ‘Trespasser’, the song examines the devastating effect that physical displacement can exert on personal identity, encapsulating the bitterness of this event in the line, ‘Mad John they made a trespasser of you’.
This fascination with identity as a fragmented concept helps to explain the juxtaposition of new arrangements of traditional English folk songs with French inspired forays, utilizing the heady sound of Andy Cutting’s melodeon (most notably in ‘I Feel a Smile Coming On’ and epic ‘Down the Wagon Way’).
The serene guitar instrumental, ‘Lusignac’ (taken form the 2004 collaborative album with Andy Cutting) demonstrates Wood’s unpretentious technical virtuosity. According to Wood, this song was written towards the end of a holiday in Dordogne and ‘marked the end of something and the beginning of something else’. The finger-picking style employed allows multiple guitar lines to engage the listener and it is flawless in conveying this duality.
The following track, ‘One in a Million’, written by storyteller Hugh Lupton and set over Wood’s own composition won the folk awards ‘Best New Song Award’ in 2006 although he admits to briefly considering omitting it from the compilation. The song is perhaps the most accessible in the collection, both in its humorous lyrical content and alluring melody.
Retelling a traditional love story in which a ring is given to a beautiful woman, is rejected, thrown into a river and ends up in the stomach of a fish where it is found, some of the lyrics carry the fish metaphor so far it becomes hilarious. The woman in question, (Peggy), works in a chip shop and the description of her beauty includes the line: ‘her eyes as bright as herrings, flashing in the net’. The deliberately childlike simplicity of the lyrics imbue the song with a natural warmth that is perfectly complemented by the guitar melody.
The multiplicity of Chris Wood's ‘Albion’ is such that it offers a perfect introduction to the artist for anybody with an interest in folk music, story telling or just great songwriting. Although tracks can often touch on complex subject-matter or include long instrumental breaks, Wood’s deftness at forming a narrative through his compositions is such that the listener becomes inadvertently involved in the anthology, rather than consciously having to discern meaning from it.
This mode of listening is encapsulated in the artist’s own fascination with the mundane, a sentiment which he summarizes perfectly in the sleeve notes:
“If you want to see life, you can go round the world looking for it or you can stay right where you are and it will come to you.’”
Words: Alex Steingold
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