Poor Creature: All Smiles Tonight review

The Guardian

7 days ago

The latest gorgeous release from the fecund Irish folk scene doesn't begin with bassy dread in the Lankum mode, but a mood of gentle, haunting psychedelia. Adieu Lovely Erin starts by evoking Broadcast swirling around a maypole; then it's as if Cocteau Twins had been transported to a traditional music session. Its sweet, high female vocals also evoke the improvisations of sean-nós singing, while simmering, krautrock-like drums build drama.
Poor Creature comprises three musicians expert in heightening and managing atmosphere: Landless's Ruth Clinton, Lankum's Cormac MacDiarmada plus live Lankum drummer John Dermody. Their debut album steeps cowboy songs, Irish ballads, bluegrass and other traditional songs in a misty, playful lightness that somehow also carries an eerie power. Bury Me Not is a 19th-century American song about a dying sailor desperate not to be buried at sea, and Clinton delivers its lamenting lyrics with a bright, shining innocence. MacDiarmada leads Lorene, a rolling, country ballad by Alabama duo the Louvin Brothers, with a similarly soft, brooding magic. Singing as a boy desperate for a letter from his beloved, despite clearly knowing he's being ghosted, the song's melancholy slowly rises as voice and guitar mesh together.
Preprogrammed beats from a Hohner Organetta (a mid-century table-top organ), the wails of an Otamatone (a 21st-century Japanese synthesiser, shaped like a musical quaver) and a theremin add childlike, hauntological flavours to much of this music. Meat and muscle are also built into Hicks' Farewell, a Doc Watson song fed through a sturdy wall of shoegaze, and propulsive highlight, The Whole Town Knows. Within Clinton and MacDiarmada's dense harmonies, Dermody's drums and the track's cacophonous final minutes, you sense folk rocketing somewhere poppy, wild and new.
A folk duo who also work in cabaret, performance, and installation art, Lunatraktors collect together six years of collaborative work on their new compilation, Quilting Points: Invitations and Open Calls 2019-2025 (self-released). A loud mix of salvaged songs, archival fragments, chaos and energetic ideas, its most intriguing tracks are the Korg-propelled 'Oss Girls, inspired by the Padstow May Day song, and The Truth of Eanswythe's Bones, a twisted choral epic inspired by the discovery of a skeleton of a 7th-century saint. Clàrsach (Celtic harp) player Grace Stewart-Skinner's Auchies Spikkin' Auchie (self-released) is a moving, textured exploration of the stories and dialect of her north-east Highlands harbour village, Avoch, mixing her playing with field-recorded conversations, fiddle, double bass and drums. Toby Hay's gorgeous New Music for the 6 String Guitar (The State51 Conspiracy) also further confirms him as a warm, 21st-century heir to the string-bending genius of John Fahey.