Topic Records: The Real Sound of Folk Music

Topic's double album is a broad introduction to the label's catalogue, and it draws its nets fairly wide. Some selections – the likes of Davy Graham's ‘Angi’, Anne Briggs' ‘Blackwater Side’, Martin Carthy's ‘Scarborough Fair’ – are classic and familiar cuts, while alongside them you'll find more unexpected choices, such as Andrew Cronshaw's ‘Wasps in the Woodpile’ as well as, from more recent years, a fine selection in ‘The Time Has Come’ from Pentangle's Finale live set. Contemporary cuts include Martin Simpson's valedictory address to his dad, ‘Never Any Good’, and one of the finest interpretations of ‘John Barleycorn’ from Tim Van Eyken's 2006 album. The performance from Brass Monkey's 1986 album, See How it Runs shows them as a more measured Bellowhead of their time, while The Full English deliver as a modern-day big band par excellence.
The Real Sound is a tribute to the label's breadth and depth, from field recordings to political songs of 20th-century socialism – some of which seem to have aged less well than dear old ‘Tamlyn’, here represented in Mike Waterson's stunning account. This is a fine introduction to the Topic label and to British folk.