January 2021 Album of the Month: Karen Matheson

 

Karen Matheson

Still Time

Compass Records

 

It’s hard to believe, but Capercaillie vocalist Karen Matheson is on the cusp of her 58^th birthday. Her voice has dropped a bit over the years, but it’s still a glorious instrument. In addition to her work with the band, Matheson also drops the occasional album that spotlights her voice; Still Time is her 5^th solo album.

 

Of course, when you’ve been performing since high school, front a celebrated band, have recorded with scores of others, and possess an OBE (Order of the British Empire) for your contributions to the arts, the term “solo” just means collections of material chosen by the artist. Still Time is packed with band members and longtime friends, including her husband Donald Shaw (accordion, keyboards), Ewen Vernal (bass), John Doyle, Sorren MacLean (guitars, vocals), and others. Call Scottish songwriter and fretted artist James Grant a co-conspirator, though, as he penned four of the album’s 11 songs. This includes the album’s single “Cassiopeia Coming Through,” which is arranged with the jazz-influenced folk ornaments that’s long been a Capercaillie trait. The song’s blue notes resonate to moody effect courtesy of Ryan Quigley’s flugel horn, but mostly it’s Matheson’s calming tones that carry the piece. In this case, the lyrics owe more to yearnings beneath the magnificent nighttime constellation than to the vain Greek beauty whose name it bears.

 

“The Glory Demon,” a self-descriptive antiwar composition, is another terrific Grant song. Matheson spins it as a quasi-lullaby, though bass, percussion, and electric guitar disrupt our peacefulness, which is precisely the point. It is one of several songs that throw curves. Another is “Orphan Girl,” which lulls us to a tender place, though it’s about a parentless lassie about to be shipped from starving Ireland to Australia–if she passes inspection. Shaw’s tasteful piano, Rudi Di Groot’s cello, and Matheson’s emotion-laden voice throw us off balance. Is this a sad song? Tragic? Hopeful? A cover of Si Kahn’s famed “The Aragon Mill” parallels it. On one hand, the mill has closed and jobs have disappeared; on the other, textile work is arduous, dirty, and poorly compensated.

 

Most of the songs on Still Time are down tempo. Objectively speaking, the record could use more changes of pace. It’s not until track five that we get Shaw’s arrangement of “This Diamond Ring,” the most Celtic-flavored song on the album, though one with some Appalachian flair, with Shaw’s accordion jousting with Hannah Fisher’s lively fiddle and Dirk Powell’s banjo. North Americans will likely find the tune evocative of “Shady Grove,” though it too is actually an older tune. Matheson gives a slowed down cover of “Recovery,” a Runrig song, its folk styling enhanced by Matheson’s precise cadences and Michael McGoldrick’s whistles. It and her version of Robbie Burns’ “Lassie wi' the Lint White Hair” are simply drop-dead gorgeous. (Note: Concert clips have different personnel.)

 

In many ways, though, Shaw’s Still Time defines the album. The recording was done during the current coronavirus lockdown. How many of us feel as if 2020 was a calendar page ripped out of our lives? “Still Time” is soaked in the ambience of a late-night club where jazz and folk musicians have sat down to find common ground. Shaw’s keys tinkle softly, Fraser Fifield’s sax blows forlorn notes, and Matheson gently catalogs all the things that will happen: If you’re still here when the morning comes around…. 

 

Rob Weir