Gold of Scar & Shale

For his second solo album, the highly regarded West Yorkshire singer and multi-instrumentalist Jack Rutter recorded the whole set live in Joe Rusby's Pure Records studio in Yorkshire, with guest musicians Sam Sweeney, Northumbrian piper Alice Robinson and Sam Fisher on flugelhorn. Rutter's first album of 11 traditional songs, Hills, captured him live and solo in the studio on guitar, bouzouki and concertina, to which he adds harmonium here. It is another singular and compelling set collected from diverse sources, many of them never before put on record. The album title is a lovely line drawn from ‘The Hills of Longdendale’ by ‘Moorland poet’ Ammon Wrigley, and quite a few of the songs have some sort of Yorkshire connection, including two fine closers, ‘The Sledmere Poachers’ and ‘Fieldfares’, from a 1918 collection from the Ridings.

Rutter is one of the finest young male singers in folk today, especially in the way he expresses narrative, and dramatises the lyric of songs like ‘I Was Once a Young Ploughboy’ with his vocal and instrumental settings.

The Child Ballad ‘Fair Janet & Young James’ is another excellent example – young women named Janet rarely come out of these ballads alive. And the band are exquisite – Sweeney on ‘The Brundeanlaws’ and ‘The Shepherd's Song’ especially.