GRANNY’S ATTIC - The Brickfields
Grimdon Records GRICD005
Granny’s Attic have made an excellent return to their roots with an all-instrumental album to follow up their well-received Wheels Of The World in 2019. This is definitely a lockdown project. Each member of the trio worked separately to compose new tunes and unearth some traditional tunes before coming together in April 2021 to record them live, with no overdubs, in just three days in producer Ian Stephenson’s studio in Northumberland. A grant from EFDDS helped with the recording costs.
Thirty tunes were whittled down to nine sets. As the album is fairly short at 37 minutes, maybe a few more could have made the cut, but what we have is full of immaculate musicianship. Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne (melodeon, Anglo concertina), George Sansome (guitar) and Lewis Wood (violin) made full use of the short rehearsal time. For their own compositions, the composer takes the lead before the others come in to build the tune dynamically. I enjoyed George’s romantic Considerate Birders (in the popular folkie tradition of writing a tune as a wedding gift); and Cohen’s Will Grimdon’s No.2, matched with Rakes Of Kirkby found in John Offord’s Bonny Cumberland. Overall, there’s a stately English country dance feel to a lot of the music, and I enjoyed the variation of Lewis’s Watt’s Reel as a lively closer with maybe a Cajun tinge. He describes it as “a fiendish eight parter”. Other tune sources include John Johnson’s Choice Collection Of Country Dances from 1750 and Thomas Straight’s 24 Favourite Dances For The Year 1783.
I don’t think the traditional tunes on this album are widely played, so musicians will be pleased to hear that the band is also selling a digital tunebook to accompany the album. They will find much to delight them.
www.grannysattic.org.uk
Tony Hendry
This review appeared in Issue 141 of The Living Tradition magazine