Until I looked it up, I didn't know that this past February The Reckoning won two big BBC Radio 2 awards, one for Folk Album of the Year, the other for Best Traditional Song ("Bitter Withy"). Furthermore, John Tams himself was declared Folk Singer of the Year.

It is gratifying to learn that one's own aesthetic judgment has been so resoundingly endorsed. This is the sort of recording that -- somewhere in the middle of the first listening -- generates thoughts and phrases that incorporate the phrase "best of."

Albums that unerringly balance modern and traditional approaches are always welcome in my CD player and to my ears. This one arrived in a big package of other recordings -- mostly worthy ones, I have found -- for review. Tams' was among the first I listened to, and the one I have returned to most consistently, with each spinning of the disc yielding new delights. Prior to this Tams, no more than a name to me, was somebody I'd seen mentioned (always respectfully) by British folk singers whose music has long been in my life; but my CD library, which is not a small one, contained only one Tams performance, a single track on an anthology. Tams' music, I take it, must be familiar to few Americans, even to those of us who know something about the British revival. Perhaps The Reckoning will change that, or at least it should. From the evidence of this disc, he ought to be a towering figure on the Anglo-American scene.

Tams, who besides his musical activities leads a successful career as a character actor in British theater, television and film, has produced field recordings (for Topic) of Irish traditional music as well as, of course, CDs under his own byline. Deeply immersed in the isles' folksong heritage, he composes stately songs with traditional structures in the manner of a more accessible Richard Thompson, and one without rock-star ambitions. Set within minimalist modern settings, these originals -- solidly constructed, darkly toned and exquisite -- brilliantly synthesize new and old. Try, for example, to get "How High the Price?" -- a seaborne anthem that wears its metaphors, however striking, lightly -- out of your head. There is also the ingeniously conceived reinvention of "Man of Constant Sorrow," here a testament to the ruined livelihoods of British miners. Approximately half of the CD consists of Tams' originals. Alongside them is an impressive collection of traditional pieces.

The 19th-century shanty "Amelia" (sometimes titled "Across the Western Ocean") gets a memorable arrangement, with Tams handling lead vocals, accompanied by his frequent playing partner Barry Coope, with veteran Roger Wilson adding extra guitar and a mix of fiddle sounds. An extended medley of old-time sailors' ballads makes for another particularly attractive cut. Tams' reading of the Child ballad "Bitter Withy" easily merits the acclaim it has received, not the least because the tale is so medieval in its sensibility and its plot so weird as to border on unimaginable, that it seems an improbable candidate for resurrection (though indeed other revival versions, though rare, do exist, for example by the Watersons and the late Peter Bellamy).

Besides Tams, Coope and Wilson, the Reckoning Band includes Andy Seward, Graeme Taylor, Keith Angel and Steve Dawson on assorted instruments, from drums to banjo to trumpet and dobro. Together they create a sort of thinly oxygenated, breath-catching sonic atmosphere that well serves the songs and Tams' vocals. Yes, let's bring out the "best ofs." The Reckoning, all that and more, will never disappoint you, but it will surely bring you joy.

by Jerome Clark
Rambles.NET
29 April 2006