No More the Green Hills

‘She Moves Through the Fair’, ‘As I Roved Out’, ‘Johnny, My Man’… Janice Burns and Jon Doran have chosen some of the finest and most interesting traditional songs for their first album. No More the Green Hills ranges widely, too: ‘Four Loom Weaver’ is an industrial lament; ‘The Weary Cutters’, an anguished outcry against the press gangs who abducted young men to serve in the British navy; ‘The Greenmore Hare’, a hunting song sung partly from the perspective of the doomed hare; ‘She Moves Through the Fair’, a classic ghost ballad.

Scottish Burns and Englishman Doran sing well, in harmony and individually; Burns – at home with the Scots language – most powerfully in ‘Up and Awa’’ and ‘Johnny My Man’. During ‘As I Roved Out’, Doran captures the deep sorrow of the young man who has married for land rather than love, to the ruin of both his and his forsaken lover's happiness. It is cleverly arranged, too, with Burns coming in at the point when the abandoned woman rebukes him. These are story songs and Burns and Doran tell them clearly, with uncluttered and appropriate accompaniment on bouzouki, guitar and mandolin, augmented by the subtle double bass playing of Ben Nicholls, and Andy Bell's assured production.