Alistair Hulett - Riches And Rags (Red Rattler)
Scots-born Alistair's long been one of my most favourite performers, a man of sublime gentility yet fierce integrity. Ali's latest album finds him celebrating the various genres that have influenced him over a musical career spanning thirty years. It's a persuasive and stimulating mix, certainly, with plenty of good examples from the fields of both traditional and composed song, and I'm pleased to find that Alistair's "friends" turn out to be none other than Nancy Kerr, James Fagan and Gavin Livingstone – which should be recommendation enough to hear this album! But to my delight, four of Alistair's own compositions are included: the title track is an infectious "Glesga' club-chant country-style" piece about remembering not to forget, while Militant Red is a tongue-in-cheek love song that sort-of-associates Valentine's Day with the red red rose of Communism! The remaining two are re-recordings of songs from the Roaring Jack days, Alistair's immensely poignant new treatment of the love-gone-wrong song Shot Down In Flames (with some lovely guitar work by Gavin Livingstone) being especially striking I thought. The latter has wistful resonances of Robin Williamson's wonderful First Girl I Loved, which then turns up as one of the four covers on the album and which Alistair phrases unusually and imaginatively. My other personal highlight here has got to be Alistair's feisty take on John Kirkpatrick's masterly Old King Coal, where Nancy Kerr's driving fiddle and Ali's own guitar create a stirring counterpoint. Ali even brings something fresh to the hoary Trouble In Mind (with the aid of Gavin's dobro). Of the small handful of traditional songs which are given the passionate and strongly individual Hulett treatment, particularly impressive is a superbly paced and eloquent Recruited Collier (which is further enhanced by Nancy Kerr's brooding viola), although any one of those three traditional selections proves a worthy addition to the library (actually I wouldn't want to be without his Fair Flower Of Northumberland either). Alistair has produced some abnormally fine albums over the years, all of which should be in your collection I say, but Riches And Rags may well embrace the widest appeal by dint of its farthest-ranging nature. (Available at just £13 from Ali at 2/1 Kenmure St., Glasgow G41 2NR; also distributed by Musikfolk.)
www.folkicons.co.uk/alistair.htm
David Kidman