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24 - 26 August 2012
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EMILY BARKER & THE RED CLAY HALO
The Centre Stage, Bournemouth
February 10

Making their first visit to Bournemouth, Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo stunned a sizeable Bournemouth Folk Club crowd with their eclectic mix of folk and country tinged story telling ballads and mesmerising four part harmonies. Still in her twenties, Emily is already a seasoned campaigner and her mature song writing skills belie her age. A native of Bridgetown, Western Australia, Emily came to England in 2002 and teamed up with guitarist Rob Jackson to front Cambridge electric folk band ‘The Low Country’ who produced two excellent albums focussing on Emily’s remarkable song writing talents. In 2007, she released her first album PHOTOS.FIRES.FABLES to critical acclaim and this cemented her relationship with Red Clay Halo spawning a second album DESPITE THE SNOW in 2008. The all girl band, Anna Jenkins (violin), Jo Silverston (cello, banjo), Gill Sandell (flute, accordion, electric guitar) complement Emily’s haunting vocals perfectly as she adds weight with both acoustic and electric guitar as well as occasional harmonica.

Showcasing their superb new album ALMANAC, the girls launched straight into Billowing Sea, then Little Deaths ‘for when things don’t go to plan’ and Ropes before delving into the back catalogue with Blackbird from PHOTOS.FIRES.FABLES which recalled her days in Bridgetown. A lovely ballad Dancers, about the chaos of living in London and written on Waterloo Bridge with guitarist Ted Barnes, was followed by the award winning Nostalgia from DESPITE THE SNOW which Emily re-recorded for the theme song to the hit BBC television series Wallander. The audience was spellbound as the girls delivered Calendar, which they had aired on BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends, before they closed a terrific first set with This is How It’s Meant to Be from the first album.

The second set kicked off with four more from ALMANAC; the appropriately titled Openings, reflecting on the importance of communities, Reckless, a love story set on the southern cliffs of Cornwall and then Light and Pause which had Emily switching from acoustic to electric guitar. Orlando told of the immortal one’s four hundred year journey taking him to the River Thames, frozen over in 1603, where he fell for a Moscovian princess whose ship was stuck in the ice; a stand out track from PHOTOS.FIRES.FABLES. Disappear, based on a book by Australian author Tim Winton, was followed by a superb rendition of Neil Young’s Look Out For My Love. As the evening was drawing to a close, Emily chose her darkest song The Witch of Pittenween, the dreadful true story of Janet Cranfoot, brutally murdered by a mob as a result of a gossiping sixteen year old whose tales were without foundation but never challenged. All too soon the last song was announced and this took Emily back to her roots with Bones, a tale of indigenous Australians. The band was clearly new to most of the BFC gathering who could only yell for more. Emily obliged, returning to encore with Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face. The hushed audience listened spellbound as Emily gently strummed her guitar and Gill Sandell provided the only support with the faintest of accordion backing. The vocals were simply awesome and a pin dropping would have sounded like Big Ben! The song has of course, been covered by almost anyone that is anyone in the music world and it is well documented that Ewan hated most of the versions. There is little doubt that he would have loved this one.

A word for Andy Stone the BFC sound man whose efforts turned this faultless performance into something extra special.

John Roffey