Seth Lakeman
Seth,; el, Σήθ ''Sḗth''; ; "placed", "appointed") in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Mandaeism, and Sethianism, was the third son of Adam and Eve and brother of Cain and Abel, their only other child mentioned by name in the Hebrew Bible. ...
's fourth album, Poor Man's Heaven (not to be confused with the EP of the same name released in late 2007), was released on 30 June 2008, entering the UK Album Charts at number 8. Taking over 10 months to finalise, many of the tracks on the album have been part of Lakeman's live set since the second half of 2006, the initial tracks performed being 'Poor Man's Heaven' and 'Race to be King', but this expanded towards the end of the tour, with new tracks continuing to be previewed throughout 2007 and into 2008.
Many songs on the album have, by Lakeman's own admission, a rockier sound than his earlier, arguably more straightforwardly acoustic folk, material.
[fRoots Magazine](_blank)
Issue 298, April 2008 The transition into this sound could be argued to originate in the live versions of the
Freedom Fields
''Freedom Fields'' is an album by Seth Lakeman released twice in 2006. It is his third album as a principal performer. It is named after a park in Plymouth, England, where the Sabbath Day Fight during the Siege of Plymouth is commemorated.
Tr ...
tracks from the respective tour, since many of them had a rockier element added (most notably on the chorus on 'The Colliers'). Indeed, Lakeman said that the decision to release the Poor Man's Heaven EP was partly to introduce this new direction to his listeners.
[Q The Jury](_blank)
November 2007
While acknowledging the shift to a rockier emphasis, Lakeman denies that the album is any less acoustic or more electric than his earlier material,
April 2008 pointing out that all the tracks are still almost exclusively performed on acoustic instruments.
Track listing
#"
The Hurlers
The Hurlers ( Cornish: ''An Hurlysi'') is a group of three stone circles in the civil parish of St Cleer, Cornwall, England, UK. The site is half-a-mile (0.8 km) west of the village of Minions on the eastern flank of Bodmin Moor, and ap ...
"
#"Feather in the Storm"
#"Crimson Dawn"
#"Blood Red Sky"
#"
Solomon Browne
Solomon (; , ),, ; ar, سُلَيْمَان, ', , ; el, Σολομών, ; la, Salomon also called Jedidiah ( Hebrew: , Modern: , Tiberian: ''Yăḏīḏăyāh'', "beloved of Yah"), was a monarch of ancient Israel and the son and succe ...
"
#"Cherry Red Girl"
#"I'll Haunt You"
#"Race to Be King"
#"Poor Man's Heaven"
#"Greed and Gold"
#"Sound of a Drum" (a reworking of traditional song,
The Unquiet Grave
"The Unquiet Grave" is an English folk song in which a young man's grief over the death of his true love is so deep that it disturbs her eternal sleep. It was collected in 1868 by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 78. One of the more comm ...
,
premiered at the Quartz Visual Arts Festival, Taunton, 13 October 2007)
#"Coppinger" (bonus track exclusive to iTunes UK)
Two of these tracks, 'Poor Man's Heaven' and 'Race To Be King', appear on the Poor Man's Heaven EP released in October 2007.
Tracks from the album can be listened to o
BBC Online
Personnel
Main:
*Seth Lakeman – vocals, violins, tenor guitar, viola
*
Sean Lakeman
Sean Lakeman (born 29 January 1974) is an English folk musician and record producer.
Early life
Sean was born and brought up as the first of three boys in Buckland Monachorum, near Yelverton, Devon with his brothers, fellow folk musicians Seth ...
- guitars, mandolin, harmonium, Producer
*Ben Nicholls – double bass, bass guitar, banjos, jaw harp, mandolin
*Andy Tween - drums, percussion
Additional Musicians:
*Ged Lynch - drums, percussion (tracks 2, 3, 5 and 6)
*Steve Knightley – vocals (tracks 1, 7 and 8), co-wrote tracks 4, 7, and 10
*David Rhodes - vocals (tracks 1, 7 and 8)
*Cormac Byrne - cajon (track 2), bodhran, shaker (tracks 5, 6 and 11)
*Richard Evans - slide guitar (track 2), acoustic guitar (track 3)
*
Kathryn Roberts
Kathryn Roberts is an English folk singer, from Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
Early career
Roberts' first released recordings were on the album ''Intuition'', a collection of songs by various South Yorkshire folk artists which also included he ...
– vocals (tracks 3 and 6)
*Jake Watson -
hurdy-gurdy
The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a v ...
(track 4)
*DBG – vocals (tracks 4 and 8)
Reviews
Mojo Magazine, July 2008. "Seth Lakeman burns high octane non-stop. On this fourth album his voice is all muscularity and barely contained passions... Beneath a superficial folk-rock jigginess his band has a possibly Led Zeppelin related sense of how acoustic fiddle, guitar and double bass riffs can weigh heavy as metal."
Q Magazine, Andy Fyfe, July 2008. "The frantic fiddle remains dominant but guitars and drums crash all around it, Feather in a Storm even adding Jimmy Page-esque slide guitar. Lakeman's unwelcome mantle of folk's poster boy is unlikely to slip."
'
BBC Online, Sid Smith, 13 June 2008'' "His song writing continues the gold-yielding formula of its predecessor with energetic strumalongs, voracious fiddles and a sparkling delivery"
'
''. "a ripsnorter of a record that will slake the thirst of crowds roused by a season of his festival performances...Still, after four albums of much the same fayre, our West Country hero might usefully stray into fresh songwriting territory next time, and lose the roll call of cliches which demand that eyes are always burning, nights always dark and dawns crimson."
'
The Times, 27 June 2008, John Mulvey "it is not his appropriation of rock music that is the problem, but the kind of rock music that he favours...uncomfortably reminiscent of records by David Gray and Damien Rice: curiously at once both overwrought and bland. "
'
'' "the album is at its best when it's at its most raw, when it stops worrying too much about charming those in charge of radio playlists and lets Lakeman's natural instinct for eeriness shine through."
Subject matter
As with much of his music, the theme of songs dealing with darker topics and real-life incidents continues on this album. Lakeman describes "I'll Haunt You" (written with
Steve Knightley
Steve Knightley (born 1954) is an English singer, songwriter and acoustic musician. Since 1992 he has been one half of folk/roots duo Show of Hands along with Phil Beer. Knightley was named "Songwriter of the Nineties" by BBC Radio 6 Music in ...
) as being 'probably the darkest material either of us
ichave ever written'. There is also a strong, though not exclusive, theme of songs about seafaring and the coast, again continuing a trend from much of his earlier material. "Solomon Browne" for example, another key track, is about the
Penlee lifeboat disaster Penlee may refer to
* Penlee House - a house and art gallery in Penzance in the UK
* Penlee Point, Mousehole - a promentary near Penzance in the UK
* Penlee Point, Rame - a promentary near Plymouth in the UK
* the Penlee Quarry railway
The Pe ...
in 1981 in which 16 people lost their lives.
In an interview for fRoots magazine in March 2008,
Lakeman gave more information on some of the tracks:
"Feather in a Storm" is based on the story of the Danish pirate
John Coppinger who, legend has it, planted false beacons on coastal rocks to lure ships to disaster while his gang lay in wait to salvage the booty.
"The Hurlers" is about a
Bodmin legend about a local priest turning local men into stone having caught them playing
hurling
Hurling ( ga, iománaíocht, ') is an outdoor team game of ancient Gaelic Irish origin, played by men. One of Ireland's native Gaelic games, it shares a number of features with Gaelic football, such as the field and goals, the number of pla ...
, when they should have been in church.
"Blood Red Sky" is a modern retelling of the old English ballad of
Reynardine
Reynardine is a traditional English ballad (Roud 397). In the versions most commonly sung and recorded today, Reynardine is a werefox who attracts beautiful women so that he can take them away to his castle. What fate meets them there is usually l ...
.
Not all the tracks are so dark. Of "Crimson Dawn" Lakeman is quoted as saying, "It's about a guy who goes out on a lifeboat and among the ones he saves is a beautiful woman, but her hair gets tangled up in the lifeboat rigging. He chops her hair off with an axe and they end up getting married and live happily ever after. That's a nice story, isn't it?".
References
{{Authority control
2008 albums
Seth Lakeman albums