Thistletown, Rosemarie
This week’s CD discovery is one I picked up in the 4 4 £10 section at my favourite Carnival Records in Malvern. I was attracted to it by the cover, which is a rather lovely graphic (see photo), and because the music appeared to be folk-inflected and a bit alternative. At the time I didn’t recognise the group or the title, but since listening to the album and discovering a little about it I’ve realised that I read about it when it first came out.
The album is unusual because it was the result of an experiment in which Will Hodgkinson of The Guardian was given five grand and asked to go out and begin a record label. The newspaper then documented his various successes and travails. This was in 2007 or thereabouts – the label was called Big Bertha Records. Hodgkinson duly went out and began work with Thistletown, whose female leads had got together around the same time. One of the people who helped was Michael Tyack, already known in that musical area, and the man behind psychedelic folkies Circulus, whose first two albums I used to listen to regularly.
Thistletown were the real deal. They lived in Cornwall, grew their own vegetables, resided on a boat and subscribed to various hippy ideals.
What is the music like, then? Well. It is absolutely fantastic.
When I lived in the Westcountry I used to visit Glastonbury town regularly, and in those days (1998 – 2005) there were plenty of shops in the High Street selling CDs. Alas, there are almost none now. A lot of the CDs I bought were by local groups, many of them superb, like Silver On The Tree. Pok of the Space Goats had his CDs there, and there were plenty of alternative disks by other artists. The Glastonbury musicians were mostly pagan-linked and folky, and a lot of the music was very much to my taste. Rosemarie is an album along those lines. It’s very tuneful, beautifully arranged and produced, and has a gorgeous hippy folk vibe that matches the best of Silver On The Tree. The twin vocals by Lydia & Tiffany are lovely, and the instrumentation is varied, with brass, exotic percussion, mandolins and so on all coming in and out of the tracks. Songwriting of this order should be celebrated and enjoyed!
I can’t recommend this album highly enough. Quite a find for one of my infamous random punts. It is available on eBay and Discogs should you be so minded, and not for much. You can also find the music on YouTube.
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This week also we remember the renowned Indian singer Asha Bhosle (inspiration for Cornershop’s hit Brimful Of Asha) who has died aged 92, and Clannad’s wonderful singer and harpist Maire Brennan, aged 73.
