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DAVID KIDMAN - Songs Worth The Singing

DAVID KIDMAN - Songs Worth The Singing
Moorsongs MSCD002

David will be known to many of us as a reviewer, and it’s always interesting to see what choice someone with a wide experience of listening to songs will make when it comes to making their own recording.

This CD is drawn predominantly from songs written in recent decades, and he’s certainly chosen from among the best songwriters – Richard Thompson, Graeme Miles, Keith Marsden, to name a few – so the material’s excellent. And with 16 tracks (two of them running two songs into one track, so 18 songs in total), there’s plenty to listen to; and that’s where (for me) the problem lies.

It’s hard for any unaccompanied singer, however skilled and experienced, to hold a listener for that long with just one voice. Had he chosen to use a bit of double tracking or backing vocals on choruses and/or some sort of accompaniment on a few of the tracks, there would have been more light and shade to the resulting CD. On some of the songs – A Penny For The Ploughboys, Sweet Sunny South for example – David lets his voice off the leash, and this is great; while on others he seems somewhat restrained and the result is that several tracks struggle to distinguish themselves from their neighbours.

David’s enunciation is always spot on and that makes this an excellent recording from which to learn some first-rate songs, and I’ll look forward to another offering where he lets his hair down a bit more!

www.davidkidman.co.uk

John Waltham


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This album was reviewed in Issue 119 of The Living Tradition magazine.