Ellen Mary McGee, founder of folk-rock band Saint Joan, has created a short but magnificently intense début album with The Crescent Sun. Its a dark lyrical collection of folk songs written, sung, and largely performed by McGee. She plays guitar, banjo, glockenspiel, drums, percussion and drafts in the help of other musicians ranging from organists to electric guitarists, which takes folk music into fascinating territories. At the same time The Crescent Sun sounds very traditional and very progressive.
At times McGee is reminiscent of folk legend Vashti Bunyan and her instrumentation tends towards the cornerstone instruments of folk traditionalism, but its a folk traditionalism that has taken on modernity on its own terms … unlike say NeoFolk, which strikes me as coming from the other direction: modernists discovering folk, normally to rather soulless results. McGee was raised in a rough Midlands council estate, and the songs of The Crescent Sun sound like a magical escape from streets of burnt out cars and syringes.
Myth fantasy and realism dance with each other in her lyrics. The realism is both magic realism of fairy tale and the kitchen sink realism of fellow Nottingham-born writer Alan Sillitoe. Her fantasy world is one dreamed of in the midst of a grim urban environment. Perhaps the story telling is ultimately the strongest part of the album, its certainly the part that made the biggest impression on me, but all round The Crescent Sun is a great début.
-AP-
