Nick Hart & Tom Moore - The Colour of Amber (2023)

Nick Hart has released three exceptional solo albums over the last seven years, titles graduating from Eight, Nine and Ten English Folk Songs. We may have coveted him getting to eleven (and he may still yet), but The Colour of Amber’s ten tracks – six songs and four instrumentals – more than constitute a significant further progression in the sonic landscape in which these English songs and tunes are presented. Tom Moore has been busy over the last dozen or so years, involved in making three well-reviewed albums – Moore Moss Rutter, II and III – in a trio with button accordion player Archie Churchill-Moss and singer/guitarist Jack Rutter, two more experimental albums with Archie – Laguna and Spectres, as well as playing with Jim Moray and with Jim and Sam Carter in False Lights.

Tom Moore has, in fact, been involved in each of Nick’s solo albums, both engineering and/or mixing, and playing fiddle or viola. The Colour of Amber then, in some respects, represents Tom stepping into the light to become a full partner in Nick’s musical ventures. Nick’s music has previously been very much guitar-based, but it’s all-change here with not a guitar in sight, Nick switching instead to viola da gamba (viol) – an instrument much more likely to be heard playing Renaissance and Baroque music than traditional folk, Tom playing viola and both adding some harmonium. As you would probably expect, Nick and Tom explicitly draw on the legacy of multiple preceding generations of traditional singers and musicians.

The title song, The Colour of Amber, comes from the singing of Mary Ann Haynes, a gypsy singer from Brighton (it is included in My Father’s The King of the Gypsies, Volume 11 in Topic’s The Voice of the People series). It may also be familiar from Chris Wood’s singing of it on the English Acoustic Collective’s 2004 album Ghosts – the English Acoustic Collective’s dark, almost chamber-like sound, not only on that song, bears some resemblance to what Nick and Tom are doing – or Lady Maisery’s version on their 2011 Weave & Spin album. The instrumentation here sounds like there’s just only viola and a harmonium drone behind Nick singing, as he fully inhabits what he describes as the “sometimes major, sometimes minor” scale, which “lends a delicious ambiguity to the melody”.

Jolly Bold Robber is musically, well, jollier – with its rolling jig-like tune – if not in the song’s story in which the robber is killed by a young sailor he tries to rob. Nick says he’s known the Brass Monkey recording of the song, sung by John Kirkpatrick, since childhood (on their eponymous 1983 album). Although Nick says that “John Kirkpatrick’s version seemed fairly unimprovable, so I wholeheartedly and unashamedly nicked it”, I would venture that Nick’s singing of it is more nuanced and the arrangement made more interesting on viola and viol.

The instrumental tracks on the album are mostly morris tunes, which is maybe no surprise as Nick and Tom have both been steeped in English dance music since their youth – Nick grew up in a family of morris dancers and has a dance band in which he plays melodeon. Flowers of Edinburgh, a tune that spread far and wide from its eighteenth-century Scottish origins, is an absolute delight here. Tom says it is “our approximation of Tony Hall’s wonderfully variated version, as heard on the now unobtainable 1986 LP ‘English Melodeon Players’” and tells us his parents played Tony’s music when he was in utero and ‘it remains a firm favourite”. Fans of the wondrous Tony Hall fear not; the said (compilation) album is available on streaming services.

Constant Billy is probably the best-known morris tune here – played with Swaggering Boney, a Gloucestershire morris tune – and in the way of musical coincidences, one that both John Kirkpatrick (on his classic 1976 Plain Capers: Morris Dance Tunes from the Cotswolds album) and Lady Maisery (lilted in their 2014 Mayday album) have recorded. The very different sound, with Tom’s viola taking the lead and Nick’s viol shadowing and underpinning the stronger melodic lines, makes every note an intriguing listen.

Nick got Three Jolly Sneaksmen, which he calls a “darkly comic little song” with its notably morris-like tune, from Martin Carthy’s 1974 album Sweet Wivelsfield. Martin said about the song: “There seem to be quite a number of songs (like Sam Hall) which treat very dramatic or tragic subjects in a quite light-hearted way, and usually by doing so they manage to be doubly effective.” Nick and Tom’s version doesn’t stray too far from Martin’s arrangement and works really well with their chosen instrumentation. The extensively collected and recorded The Raggle Taggle Gypsies shows Nick singing at its absolute best, as Tom’s viola moves delicately around the vocal, creating delightful counterpoints to the melody.

The combination of string instruments and harmonium accentuate the drone effect on the final track, a version of the song Bold Riley, Nick’s voice at times almost merging with the music. The journey of the song (in so far as it can be traced) to Nick’s ears illustrates how these songs can get passed on in more modern (recorded) music times. It was first recorded as a typical call-and-response sea shanty by A.L. Lloyd on a 1962 album called A Sailor’s Garland that he shared (alternating tracks) with Ewan McColl. Then, to follow it backwards: Nick got it from Keith Kendrick, who sang it on his 2006 album Songs from the Derbyshire Coast, having been inspired to sing it after hearing Kate Rusby’s slower, lament-like version recorded in 1997 on her Hourglass album, Kate says that the song “came to my parents via Jim Mageean”; Jim recorded it both in 1978 on his album Of Ships…And Men and again on a 1996 live duo album titled Coming Of Age with Johnny Collins. Nick and Tom’s performance of it is superb and appropriately retains the slower, dirge-like arrangement.

Since being introduced to Nick Hart’s music, he has been on my list of favourite singers. His voice on this album sounds better than ever, more lived in, excelling in the musical partnership with Tom Moore. The Colour of Amber breaks new ground musically, the viola and viol combination creating a unique setting that sounds both ancient and completely fresh, capable of adding richness and depth to the songs and tunes. This first album from the duo stands head and shoulders above just about any other English traditional album of the last few years.