Declaration
Kate Burke & Ruth Hazleton
Web Link HERE
Independent
4 stars
While Kate Burke and Ruth Hazleton are accomplished instrumentalists and songwriters, it’s their prowess as singers — solo and in stunning harmony — and as interpreters that’s primarily on display in Declaration.
Their intricate yet intrinsically spare guitar and banjo accompaniment allows optimum absorption of a well-chosen selection of traditional and contemporary songs, and two excellent self-penned numbers. Luke Plumb’s production sensitivity and expertise and his judicious backing contributions on mandolin and bouzouki guide the Australian duo’s exploration of lightness and darkness — mostly the latter — through the prism of folk song. Fidelity and infidelity are recurring themes throughout Burke & Hazleton’s fifth studio album and, by osmosis, the resilience of women. Their renditions of two trad ballads of Scottish origin, Bleezin’ Blind Drunk and Katy Cruel, offer sound alternatives to the cover versions by English songstress Linda Thompson that inspired their interpretations.
The ladies’ reading of Queen Of Hearts, a haunting 17th-century song that compares love to a game of cards, might not match Martin & Eliza Carthy’s extraordinary rendition on last year’s The Moral of the Elephant album, but it’s nonetheless riveting.
Although they’ve modified lyrics and melodies to suit their own purposes, they’ve done so with reverence to the source, overtly so in Dean Younk a Gernow — an 18th/19th-century emigration song that the pair partly deliver in the arcane language of Cornwall.
Tony Hillier
Kate Burke & Ruth Hazleton
Web Link HERE
Independent
4 stars
While Kate Burke and Ruth Hazleton are accomplished instrumentalists and songwriters, it’s their prowess as singers — solo and in stunning harmony — and as interpreters that’s primarily on display in Declaration.
Their intricate yet intrinsically spare guitar and banjo accompaniment allows optimum absorption of a well-chosen selection of traditional and contemporary songs, and two excellent self-penned numbers. Luke Plumb’s production sensitivity and expertise and his judicious backing contributions on mandolin and bouzouki guide the Australian duo’s exploration of lightness and darkness — mostly the latter — through the prism of folk song. Fidelity and infidelity are recurring themes throughout Burke & Hazleton’s fifth studio album and, by osmosis, the resilience of women. Their renditions of two trad ballads of Scottish origin, Bleezin’ Blind Drunk and Katy Cruel, offer sound alternatives to the cover versions by English songstress Linda Thompson that inspired their interpretations.
The ladies’ reading of Queen Of Hearts, a haunting 17th-century song that compares love to a game of cards, might not match Martin & Eliza Carthy’s extraordinary rendition on last year’s The Moral of the Elephant album, but it’s nonetheless riveting.
Although they’ve modified lyrics and melodies to suit their own purposes, they’ve done so with reverence to the source, overtly so in Dean Younk a Gernow — an 18th/19th-century emigration song that the pair partly deliver in the arcane language of Cornwall.
Tony Hillier
