The cumulative effect is like that of the films of Robert Eggers, whose thoroughly researched and densely packed period details serve to render both the crushing grind of our ancestors’ daily lives and the figments and phantoms that may have haunted their imaginations. There are glimpses of the uncanny at the edges, like the instrumental “Waves on the Shore,” whose bowed string lines stretch and flicker as if refracted through a hall of mirrors. The sternly declarative vocal delivery of Mataio Austin Dean-one of the collective’s two most prominent singing voices, along with the more dramatically expressive Granata-brings to mind some grizzled old sailor or fisherman entertaining his fellow laborers over a pint after a long day. Though the album’s collage-like presentation is resolutely contemporary, its component pieces are largely faithful to the source material. Where a previous generation of young Britons sought to revitalize folk music by fusing it with the cutting-edge sounds of their era- Fairport Convention with rangy rock’n’roll, Pentangle with candlelit modal jazz-Shovel Dance Collective emphasize the essential strangeness of the music not by gussying it up but by laying it bare. The Water Is the Shovel of the Shore contains four roughly 15-minute pieces, each a medley of folk songs-drawn from the histories of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Guyana-interspersed with field recordings of lapping riverbanks and bustling dockyards. And though Shovel Dance Collective’s full ensemble playing is lushly beautiful, they mostly withhold it, focusing on the quiet intensity of two or three voices interacting at a time. There is not so much as an acoustic guitar in the credits of The Water Is the Shovel of the Shore, which instead favors instruments that conjure a deeper and stranger antiquity: hammered dulcimer, bowed cittern, mountain banjo, pump organ. Compared to those two, Shovel Dance Collective are spartan and rigorous in their approach. They’re part of a loose-knit London scene whose participants have a similarly varied relationship to strict tradition: bands like caroline, whose post-rock instrumentals draw upon English folk as one of many influences, and the Broadside Hacks, who perform centuries-old songs in communal and improvisatory new arrangements. Some of Shovel Dance Collective’s nine members grew up playing folk music, and others started as indie rock or experimental musicians and came to it later. For them, folk song is a living tradition, not a museum piece. As for whether this is some exalted true and original version of “The Grey Cock” or a newer amalgamation, I suspect that Shovel Dance Collective don’t particularly care. ![]() ![]() There are no instruments behind them only the sound of softly rushing water. Nick Granata, one of multiple vocalists in the London ensemble, delivers “The Grey Cock” with controlled vibrato, lingering on certain syllables and letting others rush by, sounding at times as if they've seen a spirit themselves. Shovel Dance Collective, on their remarkable new album The Water Is the Shovel of the Shore, go with the ghost story. In one interpretation, the explicitly supernatural character of “The Grey Cock” is a comparatively recent addition, imported from an unrelated Irish ballad in another, it is a remnant of the song’s original form, scrubbed from the official record to avoid the appearance of superstition and reintroduced via oral tradition sometime later.
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