A Golden Thread

Pete Morton is unashamedly old school – in the best possible way. He's a fine singer, with a relaxed but powerful voice, and an even better songwriter with a gift for strong melodies and a bravely emotional approach in which anger is matched with hope. He's also a fine interpreter of traditional songs – as he shows with his quietly intense, gently gutsy reworking of ‘Barbry Allen’.

So why isn't he even better known, after a musical career that has lasted for nearly 30 years? It is, I suspect, a question of fashion. His upbeat, singalong approach to tackling the wrongs of the world echoes that great American protest singer, the late Pete Seeger, and Seeger's rousing song of healing, ‘Oh Had I a Golden Thread’, provides a powerful opening to this album, Morton's first set of new material in five years.

The eight self-penned songs include the thoughtful ‘Yemeni Moon’ in which he is backed by the Peace Through Folk choir for a stirring anthem that manages to be both a celebration of unity (‘we're all one’) and an attack on gun runners that includes a reference to Dylan's ‘Masters of War’. Then there's the thoughtful ‘Immigrant Child’ and ‘The Grenfell Carol’, another bravely tuneful song of tragedy and optimism. I'm sure Seeger would have approved.