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Rosemary Standley - Love I Obey - Gramophone

Look back over the classical releases of the past few years and you’ll see a trend emerging. Sitting somewhere at the junction of folk music, early music, bluegrass, jazz and even pop, it includes albums like Andreas Scholl’s ‘Wayfaring Stranger’ (Decca, 1/02), Apollo’s Fire’s ‘Come to the River’ (Avie), Anonymous 4’s wonderful ‘1865’ (Harmonia Mundi, 2/15), most of L’Arpeggiata and even Concerto Caledonia’s ‘Purcell’s Revenge’ (Delphian – see below). ‘Love I Obey’ is a new addition to the genre, a disc steeped in whiskey and woodsmoke, tragic deaths and even more tragic loves.

If you’re not into indie French-American bands then you might not have come across Rosemary Standley, lead vocalist of Moriarty, a country-blues-rock collective whose music recently took an acoustic turn. Her voice is the guiding thread through an album that sets 17th-century English ballads (Purcell, Lawes) alongside traditional American folksongs, and pairs a theorbo, viola da gamba and serpent with guitar and bugle. The results are bewitchingly lovely, and more organic than many similar genre-crossing experiments. That’s mostly down to Standley, whose delivery is disarmingly direct, cultivatedly naive. There’s an innocence at the top of this American-accented voice that blends down to a startling guttural depth at the bottom. She’s supported by the crack team of Bruno Helstroffer on theorbo and guitar (by turns elegant and folk-percussive), and keyboardist Elisabeth Geiger, with occasionally jazz-style breaks from Michel Godard on serpent and bugle.

Inevitably, not all tracks are created equal. The traditional American repertoire is the most natural fit, but the title-song by William Lawes and Henry VIII’s ‘Pastime with good company’ also come off well. Purcell’s Evening Hymn is unexpectedly frenetic but none the worse for that.

Gramophone
01 July 2015