Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
To be considered as sounding warm, inviting or even welcoming is to some a death knell, the sound of pleasantries made to be engaging, yet despite the wary nature of such social niceties, to use warm, musically demonstrative and even tender when talking about Dorset’s Ninebarrow is not to be friendly, to add Dorset charm to the world of literature, instead it is to be seen as graceful, elegant and stylish; for in Ninebarrow’s Releasing The Leaves lays the foundation stone of the next generation of Folk music at its very best.
English Folk music may once have been looked upon with suspicion in some quarters, the talent for drawing upon the very fabric of nature perhaps seen as quaint, not in keeping with the industrial spark or the post war bleakness and subsequent boom that followed, however from out of the post 20th Century frigidity and frostiness towards the genre, so much beauty has been able to transcend the barrier between possible audience and artist that what comes across is much more than a delight, it is powerful and telling.
In Ninebarrow, Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere offer great insight to a world sometimes overlooked, often ignored and worse, taken for granted, a world of haunting melody, of sensational harmony and most of all, a world which typifies looking through the illusion and seeing a truth yet to be explored, it is with a greater sense of urgency and pleasure when such a truth is presented.
In tracks such as Lord Exmouth, Weave Her A Garland, the superb Three Ravens and Blood On The Hillside, Ninebarrow not only present a subtle truth, they relish in the opportunity to be able to show it to the listening audience, like the finest hand crafted work of art, it delights in being appreciated, that this is no mass produced mealy mouthed moment of musical sculpture is to be admired. This is the type of experience that sits on a shelf in a gallery, security guards and C.C.T.V. monitoring its safety and all from behind a velvet rope; the only difference is that this moment of artist history is to be touched and made contact with in every way possible.
A stunning second album by Ninebarrow, a beautiful reminder of just what English Folk can offer.
Ian D. Hall