Sing Yonder 1

In 2021 graphic designer Karl Sinfield began putting simple arrangements of traditional songs online, with basic chords and audio guidance for beginners. Soon Sinfield was producing printed collections of the music – the Sing Yonder books. Each book contained 10 songs, and he began at the beginning of the Roud Song Index – an archive of close to 25,000 folksongs – with each volume continuing through the index. With the books being warmly received, Sinfield sounded out his favourite musicians to record songs from the first volume and Sing Yonder 1 is the result.

The selection is powerful if dark – three deaths in two verses in ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender’. Arrangements are simple, but this serves the songs well, highlighting their stark, sometimes otherworldly qualities. They are inventive, too; Jim Causley’s rhythmic piano suggesting the eagerness of the horse the lord rides to seek his bride in ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsies’. Bird in the Belly do something similar, but different, in ‘Sovay’, a horse galloping away expressed in a flute solo. Angeline Morrison uses handclaps and almost joyful backing vocals to both counter and highlight ‘The Three Ravens’’ bleakness. Sinfield invited anyone to send a recording of the tenth song, ‘The Unfortunate Lass’. Soon he had a dozen. Hevelwood’s version, with electro-beats and jangles, is on the CD, but the Bandcamp download features all 12, all different.