Brits Show Americans How Folk-Rock Is Done

When most people think folk-rock, they imagine the jingle-jangle of The Byrds or Bob Dylan going electric in the ‘60s. But that’s just the American take on the form. Soon after U.S. artists began souping-up vintage acoustic ballads with electric instruments, young British musicians started applying the same principal to their own folk story.

The result? The great Celtic rock movement, pioneered by creatively rich groups like Fairport Convention, Pentangle and The Incredible String Band.

OFFA REX
The Queen of Hearts
(Nonesuch Records)

That’s the spirit a new act, Offa Rex, channels on their beguiling debut. Named after an 8th Century Anglo-Saxon king, Offa Rex brings together two known acts—one of whom isn’t British at all. Folk singer Olivia Chaney (the legit Brit), paired for the project with The Decemberists, the Portland-based, alt-folk-rock band whose leader, Colin Meloy, has long displayed a fetish for tales of mariners and maidens.

Like Fairport and Pentangle, Offa Rex revels in the complex interplay between a willowy female singer and a stalwart rock band.

Chaney shares some specific features with Fairport’s revelatory front-woman, Sandy Denny (whom most listeners will know as the singer who traded howls with Robert Plant on Led Zeppelins “The Battle of Evermore”). Like Denny, Chaney has the voice of a haunted soul. She sings in billowing cadences, shimmering with beauty but wary in spirit. It’s a sound well-suited to the dangerous tales in the Celtic cannon.

For their album, Offa Rex chose all traditional songs save one piece penned in the 1950s by a prime preserver of Brit-trad., Ewan MacColl. The group delivers MacColl’s classic “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” in the understated style its author intended, contrasting the grand reading in Roberta’s Flack’s hit take. As harrowing and bloody as the subjects of trad. songs can be, the ones here stick mainly with betrayed lovers. By the standards of the genre, the album has a shockingly low body count.

There is, however, keen attention paid to the poetry in ye olde lyrics. Chaney’s readings make the most of the elegant verbiage, as does Meloy in his two vocal leads. The band surround their voices with a ringing mix of harpsichords, harmoniums, dulcimers and whistles. In “Sheep Rock and Black Dog” they lean on their hardest side, tuning the guitars to channel the gothic shudder of early Black Sabbath. Even in its lighter lilts, however, this folk rocks.

Fairport Convention during their heyday.

Fairport Convention
Come All Ye (The First Ten Years 1968 -1978)
“(A&M/UMe)

Listeners eager to trace the roots of the style Rex references should chase down a new, seven CD box set which cherry-picks the best songs from Fairport Convention’s crucial first decade.

Timed to the band’s 50th anniversary, the 121-song collection greatly alters the band’s official catalog by featuring over 50 previously unreleased tracks, most of them demos, live versions or outtakes, rather than utterly uncovered material. Luckily, the other-worldly voice of Denny, the guitar wizardry of Richard Thompson, and the fiddle shenanigans of Dave Swarbrick lend most of the variations fascination.

The peak songs cover material from albums like What We Did On Our Holiday, Unhalfbricking, and Liege and Lief (the 1969 work that, more than any, provided the template for Celtic-rock). The set’s last two discs feature unbroken live performances, including one from 1973 that has never been chronicled, followed by another one that augments, and cleans-up, a show from the band’s 1974 reunion concert album with Denny.

Listening to both, you’ll understand why Offa Rex worked so hard to bring this historic sound into the present.

Jim Farber has been writing about music since The Ramones were young. He served as Chief Music Critic for the New York Daily News for 25 years and currently contributes to The New York Times, The Guardian, Mojo, and many other outlets. Jim is a two-time winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, America’s highest prize in music criticism.