Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Weave Trust With Truth, for in between each stitch, each thread, there lays the endeavour of perfection in which communities thrived and looked after each other, a sense of belonging in which modern industry has replaced the thousands of people required to produce quality goods will never understand, all gone in the name of supposed automation, all disappeared in the drive for greater profit potential. From the fishermen to the drapers, the dockers to the railwaymen, all were part of something greater than the single man or woman, all were involved in a larger tapestry, all we were interlaced with each other, all now on the decline.
To listen to an aural history of one such occupation is to hear a million voices tell their tale, the bond that created something that might travel to all corners of the world, found in far off lands whilst everyday your life is governed by the seam, the clock and the people around you, that is in many ways, an honour, a privilege into which many now will never understand.
It is an honour that Gifford Lind, Alex Black and Guy Burgess, alongside a guest appearance by the College Club Chorus from Pattiesmuir seek to offer as they bring forth songs and poems about Dunfermline weaving in the adventurous and honest pursuit of Weave Trust With Truth.
It seems the perfect allegory, a mirroring of our times that truth and the art of weaving are in such short supply that we have to venerate it as a skill that goes together and yet perhaps we should, truth is complex, a wrong stitch placed and the whole edifice falls apart, a misplaced lie can bring tear the flimsiest of material to shreds and it is in this analogy that the songs of generations of weavers are placed in the caring hands of musicians who cannot be faulted for their integrity.
The songs, poems and delicately alluded to tales that are knitted together with intricate, almost intimate knowledge, are a verbal history retold, a recounting of what life is like in such conditions and across such industries, occupations that have been lost but still the stories remain. In the pieces Plant It Cut It, Jamie Blake, Dunfermline Linen and The Weaving’s Gone, the truth and the finished article is laced with pride, a sentiment not lost upon the listener as they grapple with the sheer scope of the courage that it took to make such an article that would not only reflect well on the community, but which would also outlive their own lives on Earth.
A definitive album that focuses on the folk tradition, stories, poems and songs laid down for future generations to benefit from.
Ian D. Hall