Will Finn & Rosie Calvert - Beneath This Place (2018)

Beneath This Place is the debut album from Will Finn and Rosie Calvert. Known for their work as half of a capella quartet The Teacups, Will and Rosie will's unique approach to arrangement see's them explore both song and tune on this brave debut.

It s not often that you hear British traditional music played on steel pans but that s what you ll find here. Will and Rosie are half of The Teacups, known for their unaccompanied harmony but on Beneath This Place, their debut album as a duo, they expand their musical palette

The opening track comes as something of a surprise. Banks Of Sacramento is a capstan shanty, possibly of German origin, from the days of the gold rush and Stephen Foster may have had a hand in it, or even nicked parts of it. Will and Rosie take it at a cracking pace that they couldn t possibly keep up for a whole album. It may be my age but I find most of the songs to be comfortably familiar. There s Dave Goulder s January Man , Graeme Miles The Shores Of Old Blighty , Paddy s Lamentation , Tennyson s Crossing The Bar and The Cottager s Reply . They are all nicely done and the multi-tracked Crossing The Bar is masterful but they can t muster any of the venom that Chris Wood brought to Frank Mansell s poem. Then again, who could?

The instrumental selections are more adventurous. The first set pairs the traditional MacDonald s with a Brazilian choro piece, Tico Tico , and the steel pans are at the forefront with Evan Carson s percussion doing sterling work in support. Rosie s two compositions are both a bit off the wall: Scampo is modern mouth music sung over piano and percussion and Gill s Jig , written for her mother s birthday, cleverly incorporates multiple musical styles. Will composed one set, Twenty Months At Sea/The Priory , and the final set pairs Midwinter Waltz by Larry Edelman (not the most famous composer in the world) and complete with gramophone crackle with Into The Unknown , the theme from Over The Garden Wall.