Jackie Oates – Hyperboreans (One Little Indian)

The first and most important thing to say about this album is that it has The Most Lovely Song In The World on’t. Birthday is a sob-sob gulperama originally written and performed by the Sugarcubes (y’know, Bjork and that). You can really hear Bjork’s influence in the song but when you go back and listen to the Sugarcubes’, well, effort you realise that the song actually belongs to Jackie and they should have handed it straight over and not recorded it at all with all that shouting and synthesiser claptrap.

Originally a member of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, Jackie (correctly, in my opinion) left to pursue a (much better, in my opinion) solo career. She has such a beautiful, honest voice and you can tell how much she loves the songs she is singing. But Birthday is a bit of a red herring as most of her songs are traditional folk; singing about love lost on the high seas and dead cows, decrepit tradesmen and murder.

And I bloomin’ love it. And she’s ace at it. Her voice and her spirit seem to fill these stories with humanity. She’s not one of those spindly, anaemic, reedy voiced, whingy folk girls, hell NO. You can hear that she has character and spark and humour and is probably dead good at jokes and sharing one too many jugs of spiced cider.

You can tell how excited I was about this album. Ripping-the-cellophane-off-with-my-teeth kind of excited. But…(gulp)…I was a bit disappointed.

Hyperboreans opened with what would be a delicious Jackie-tastic song The Miller And His Three Sons…but then this bloody drum came humphing in and ruined it. I actually felt embarrassed on behalf of the song. It would have been so much better without it.

It snuck in again with its patronising thunk on bits of the second (and title) track Hyperboreans (a song about a wind and a tribe – I mean, that is cool…No wonder the bloody drum wanted in on it…).

Birthday was stripped back and bare which is what made it so shivery magic when compared to the original version: why wouldn’t she do that with all of them? She must have been blackmailed into it by an evil producer.*

I got into my stride with this album at about track five (a proper miserable number hanging out at the bottom of the depressive scale called Past Caring) and the feelings of disenchantment started to subside. It’s a nice album but there’s just a bit too much going on in parts for my liking. I’m not a complete dick and I’m all for folk with modern influences…but not just for the sake of it. It’s got to work within the context of the song and the voice of the singer and for me (just my opinion, etc, etc) some stuff just didn’t work. Why the voice overlaps on Locks and Bolts? It would be way more honest and enjoyable without. It just felt a bit itchy and uncomfortable.

I still love Jackie but am a bit blah about this album. I LOVED The Violet Hour (her second album) and I’m going to race (well, stroll) out to get her first album. I just think she maybe needs to drown the producer* of Hyperboreans in the lake of Marsh Green.

*(I’ve just read that the producer is her brother (Jim Moray). Oops. I stand by it though.)

Joy Thomas