Restitute

In 2016, the Wayward Band, the ensemble of gifted musicians Eliza Carthy first assembled in 2013, suffered what she describes as a ‘monumental con’ and lost the funding for their ambitious BigMachine album. Carthy was moved to record Restitute, her first solo album for 14 years, in her bedroom and sell it to raise money to pay the band. It has now been released by Topic as part of the label's 80th birthday celebrations.

Restitute opens with ‘Friendship’ but, unsurprisingly, anger at injustice and corruption runs through it. She curses capitalists with Leon Rosselson's ‘The Man Who Puffs the Big Cigar’, lampoons lawyers with her setting of Jonathan Swift's poem ‘Helter Skelter’ and sings ‘Dream of Napoleon’, one of a body of English traditional songs radically admiring of Bonaparte.

Carthy sings with absolute conviction, scraping a jagged accompaniment from her violin. But it isn't all furious: ‘Lady All Skin and Bone’ is a comedic contemplation of death, and the album closes with ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, expressing the necessity of friendship.