This ghostly single yields more depth and pleasure than plain voice and guitar have a right to allow. The talent of FRAN RODGERS has already been noted in W&H. But this first "proper" single does stand up as special. Producer Richard Green has put his magic touch (and his analogue tape recorder) at RODGERS' disposal and the lustre shines across each undulation like evening sunshine across gentle hills. The dips, shadows and glints of the simple soundscape draw the listener deeper in than he or she might have intended.
It’s tempting to write about Fran as if she was a throwback to the days of Peggy Seeger or Shirley Collins, meticulously fingerpicking her way through lovelorn ballads modelled on songs like "Polly Vaughan". She has a classic voice, for sure, somewhere between the homeliness of Vashti Bunyan and the penetrating soprano of Joan Baez. The guitar style is, certainly, reminiscent of those adopted by folk revivalists in the early to mid 1960s.
But this is all misleading. Checking your grandparents Ian and Sylvia records or digging out the Carolyn Hester from the Oxfam Shop won’t help you at all. As you listen to this single it might be better to bear in mind that Fran often sings in the places where Leeds' indie and punk bands can be heard. She knows a bit about folk from her English and French parents, but a Warren Ellis-inspired Nick Cave would be a stronger and more reliable point of reference than early Sandy Denny. As with Cave, there is a stab of darkness below the surface that blasts away any hint of the formaldehyde that might still cling to some preconceptions of the folk scene.
The main tune "I Fell To You Under Winter Sun" opens (you must play it VERY LOUD) with the sonic arrival of something from the bowels of the earth. Green's inventive use of the echoes from a marching drum makes sure that whatever follows this intro can’t be shrugged off lightly. Lyrically it’s a hauntingly confessional song of willing submission and feminine wisdom, knowingly "bound to sorrows and fare-thee-wells". It's more pop song than folk song in form, but it does ring with ancient voices and universal, adult truth. Just like folk songs. A chorus has a perfect choir of Fran's own voice that shifts the mood heavenwards. But before anyone mentions "angels", remember that angels were male. And deadly serious bastards with it. (cf. John Milton)
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If there were any doubt about whether this was folk music, "To Long No More" opens with "My baby's eyes were blue" - and in folk songs babies are newborn, and bring tragedy and slaughter. This baby "slept a winter by my side with fortunes turning like a tide". It's a mysterious and compelling love song, with as strong an erotic charge as the main tune.
Third song "She Dwelt Among Th'Untrodden Ways" is a beautiful setting of Wordsworth's delicately drawn, and far more platonic love poem. It has a church-like organ part, written and played by Richard Green. The guitar fingerpicking keeps the emotional pressure running. It succeeds brilliantly in folding in a tantalising descending extra phrase after the second verse. Only two minutes and twenty seconds long the song and the record) ends at the graveside. Its brief moment is in perfect symmetry with Wordsworth's understated glimpse of the single "violet by a mossy stone" that represents his sister Dorothy so poignantly.
It’s a mark of the sureness of RODGER'S muse that the masterful economy of Wordsworth's lyric doesn't overshadow or chase off the earlier songs in any way.
www.franrodgers.co.uk
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