I love it when I am contacted by a band offering something musically new to me, and it is even better when you end up thoroughly enjoying what you listen to.
The Salts have garnered a lot of positive comments in the folk-rock world. The band are Brian Doran on vocals, mandolin, and whistle; Lee Collinson on vocals, banjo, and acoustic guitar; Jeremy Hart on vocals and acoustic guitar; Richard Nash vocals and drums; and Richard Cantrell on double bass and vocals. All five of these musicians have an impressive career roll call behind them, and you can find out more at https://www.thesalts.co.uk/ If you pop along to the shop part of that website, you will see the cd releases, and this review is for Live in London Town, recorded live in Wilton’s Music Hall in April 2023. If I were to offer a simplistic description of them, I would say that they perform shanties. That, in itself, hides a deeply rich and fascinating world of historic roots music. Further, once you immerse yourself in this album, you realise that we have a folk-rock band embedded in a particular tradition but stamping their own imprint on it in a thoroughly modern setting. There are parts of it which sound so much like The Levellers, others like classic Lindisfarne, with some blues, jazz, and Americana thrown in for good measure. Let’s have a talk about them and play some music.
From the off on Johnny Come Down to Hilo, you are struck by the musicianship, mandolin and acoustic guitar, banjo, thumping drum, and vocal harmonies creating a fine noise, a warmth which pulls you gently into their musical world, this one referencing girls in Hawaii, I believe.
I have embedded below a video for Hanging Johnny released by the band. The whistle is a joy, the song referencing Johnny who swears he never hung anybody in a track which has clear roots in darker times in our societal history and more than a bit of the archetypal gallows humour to it, varying candidates for the hangman’s rope, with the shanty “strung out” to increase its length and impact. I would also love a pint of the stuff they are brewing!
I have an audio for you of Good Ship Bess, this being the shortened name of Elizabeth and, of course, commonly associated with “Good Queen Bess”, beloved of the rank and file of the Navy and soldiery. This was the first track that I sat up and thought I was listening to The Levs, the main vocalist here Jeremy Hart sounding for all the world like Chadwick from one of my favourite bands. This is a cracking rock track with a backstory four hundred years old, the protagonists enjoying wine, women, and song before facing the Spanish enemy.
Alabama John Cherokee has its roots pre-US Civil War. The double bass introduces an Americana folk delight singing about an Indian man, with some great harmonies and delicious mandolin & banjo notes at the top of the range. Fifteen Men has some fine jazzy roots to it. There are some extremely complex patterns in this music. The drums and double bass form a very tight rhythm section.
Silver & Shame is embedded below. It is a favourite track of mine from the album, a beautifully delicate pastoral track which tells the story of those “gentlemen” of the road. The whistle reminds me very much of the spirit of Tull’s folk period, which I love. Some of the guitar work is intricate, and the anger in the hangman’s reward is palpable.
Dead Horse is a thoughtful piece featuring some wonderful fretwork again, and is a shanty traditionally sung at the end of a sailor’s first month at sea. Those of you of the gaming tendency might be interested to know you can listen to this on Assassin’s Creed 4.
Nelson’s Blood is a reference to rum and was also known as “roll the old chariot along”, based on the myth that Nelson’s body was placed in a barrel of rum after his death. More very complex acoustic guitar work feature in parts in this track, with a night out with the girls not doing any harm, as, of course, would the blood itself. Anthemic and very good.
Fire Marengo also has its roots in the cotton ports of Southern USA, originating from “Stevedores”, men employed at docks loading and unloading ships. I like the vocals on this, a group effort, with some very powerful guitar and bass work, in some of which you can hear traces of Led Zep III, which was, of course, very much rooted in blues and folk music.
London Town is up next. It is simply beautiful, the voice at the heart of everything, backed by some wonderfully delicate playing by the band. You are transported to a different time, a different madhouse of our capital city, when it was the focus of world trade, with the rigs and the jigs of fishing vessels interspersed with a tale of the opposite sex.
A Shadow Falls is a harder edged song with Celtic revolutionary roots, the ideas of liberty, fraternity, and equality alien to the land in which the track is situated, with the shadow falling after building ever higher walls. It is a cracker.
The Bulgine Run is a reference to American slang for a railway engine, so the song probably started as a song sung by workers on the infamously hard railway lines in pioneering days. The track pulses with energy, is deeply infused with American working-class sensibilities, and is simply brilliant. Close your eyes, hear that banjo, the voices, the deceptively simple drums, and you are transported to a room filled with smoke, women, booze, and the deprivations of an entire citizenry shockingly exploited in the rush to create transport links across a vast wilderness, dreaming of going back to Liverpool Town.
Hieland Laddie is an old Scottish marching song, the whaling and transport ships crossing the ocean, but I believe it has its roots in Burns, adapted to varying times. The beat is relentless and as the pace continues to build up you picture the frenzied dancing in Jacobian bars far afield, especially as the double bass is thumped at the close.
The album’s closing song is Hold the Line, and I have embedded it below. It is perhaps the finest track The Levellers never recorded. This is one of the best folk-rock tracks you will hear, with the vocal interplay stunning, the mandolin particularly beautiful, a piece of music which tugs at the heartstrings with its drowning intensity.
Live in London Town is the sound of a very confident act, a group of musicians who are deeply embedded in what is an eclectic spectrum of shanty songs with its roots in working class tradition and stories, but with a well-engineered live setting sounding like a very relevant 2023 act, with nothing derivative at all.
This album is highly recommended. It is a work which gets better with each listen.