Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Fates


The Fates (Una Baines', ex-Fall/Blue Orchids) This collection of Celtic folk-flavoured songs, originally inspired by tales of white witchcraft through the ages, it's a pleasant enough gathering offlutes, percussion, poems, laments, vocal harmonies and acoustic guitars from a group of nine women. Ignore the Linder-type off-putting cover and delve inside to become gently bewitched by the melodic, mystical spell of this frail, proud music. Old hippies all? Maybe, but you don't need to be loud to be worth hearing. Possibly the two poems on Side Two, 'Who Am I?' and 'Ritual', slip over into pretentiousness with their 'atmospheric' backgrounds and monosyllabic vocals. But in the main, as Laurie Lee might put it, "this music has something of the quality of charm; radiance, balance and harmony."

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