1 post tagged “chamber music”

A few months ago I decided to make a renewed effort to keep track of my favorite bands and musicians, and MySpace seemed like an easy way to do it: make friends, sit back, and watch their bulletins roll in.  So I friended everyone I could think of, and I was surprised to find that a lot of bands I thought were defunct had MySpace pages anyway.  In some cases the band had reformed, in others the page is maintained by a former member, and in still other cases the page is maintained by a fan.  The page for Shelleyan Orphan, the duo of Caroline Crawley and Jem Tayle, who haven't released an album since 1992, is fan-maintained.  So it was quite a thrill yesterday to see the bulletin that Shelleyan Orphan would be performing again!  It's just one show, and it's in London (across the Atlantic from me), at an environmental conference with an exorbitant admission fee, so I can't see it, but the knowledge that they are still together and making music is comforting.  I remember when their first album, Helleborine, arrived at the Record World in Ballston Common (where I was manager) in 1987.  This was back in the days when if you wanted to hear an album, you had to buy it first.  But the album cover (shown below) was so enthalling--two plaster life-masks set in a wispy sea-green (that's Crayola sea green) background with Brian Froud-like faeries peeking through--and the instrumentation so appealing (violin, viola, cello, oboe, flute, cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon, harpsichord, piano, double bass, mandolin, harp) that I bought it unheard (with my 30% employee discount).  And I was not disappointed: Helleborine is the finest orchestral chamber pop album ever made, not to be confused with indie milquetoast "chamber pop" like Belle and Sebastian and their ilk.  It is the musical equivalent of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, concerned with myth, love, and death, substituting gorgeous, sumptuous musical arrangements for gorgeous, sumptuous images.  It is a masterpiece of English pastoral music.  Here is a beautiful song about tombstones, "Epitaph and Ivy Woe":

And here's a video for "Cavalry of Cloud," also from Helleborine:

I give them extra points for not misspelling "cavalry" as "calvary," as just about everyone else does.  Shelleyan Orphan dropped the chamber orchestra for their two other albums, Century Flower and Humroot, which is not surprising since Helleborine wasn't a big seller and it must have cost a lot to pay all those musicians.  The results were still pleasing, but not on the level of the shining beacon that is Helleborine.