Queen of the Whirl

‘I've given blow jobs on couches to men who don't want me anymore’ – that first line of Eliza Carthy's ‘The Company of Men’ announces that you are in the company of a woman who is a forthright, courageous artist. Loud, proud, playing her fiddle with brio, Carthy hurls herself into songs like a diver from a clifftop. With electric guitar and bass, piano and drums her band, The Restitution, is equally loud, equally committed. To celebrate 30 years as a professional musician Carthy & The Restitution revisit songs from across her career, recording them anew.

Carthy asked Twitter followers what songs she should tackle again and they came up with a fine selection including some favourites (‘The Snow It Melts the Soonest’), less well-known songs (Peggy Seeger & Ewan MacColl's ‘Space Girl’), and one in tribute to her late mother Norma Waterson (The Mighty Sparrow's ‘Good Morning, Mr Walker’). Carthy wittily enlivens ribald folk songs such as ‘Whirly Whorl’, which is the complaint of a young woman married off to an old man, but the revelation of this album is the power of her own writing, for instance in ‘Two Tears’ and ‘Blood on My Boots’, a night time city odyssey worthy of Tom Waits. This is dramatic musical writing, brilliantly arranged and performed with an irresistible theatricality.