efn Reviews
Humphreys and Anahata album cover

“Floating Verses” Mary Humphreys and Anahata
Wild Goose Records WGS322CD
Mary Humphreys and Anahata are well known and well loved on the folk scene and I personally enjoyed Anahata's past performances at Leigh Folk Festival. This CD consists of English traditional songs, especially from Anahata's native East Anglia with good heritage: Sharp, Purcell, Vaughan Williams and Suffolk pubs!

Mary's rustic tones together with her instrumental skills on concertina and banjo work well. Marry them with Anahata's versatility on cello and his many squeeze boxes, add a little help from their friends on fiddle, recorder and guitar and together they work very well indeed.

The track that stands out for me is an instrumental, Geld Him, Lasses Geld Him a hornpipe by Purcell arranged by Alistair Anderson - brilliant........ Or is it Maid Freed From the Gallows, a Sharp song with snatches of morris tunes between verses that works very well too?

Actually this CD grew on me: it has variety, some really catchy tunes and innovative arrangements that, just as you think you know where it is going, it changes and goes somewhere else - very interesting - I am going out now and it is coming with me to play in the car - say no more.

  Review By: John New
From efn issue 127 - June 2005
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