Tuesday 25 September 2012

Record Review - Various Artists

Published in the Metro section of the Sydney Morning Herald, Friday 21st.


Various Artists
Banished Now From My Native Shore: The Verse Of Frank The Poet
Stobie Sounds

3.5/5

The story goes that in 1832, a young Irishman named Francis MacNamara stole a piece of cloth and so was sentenced to seven years transportation in Australia. It’s with Frank the Poet, as he became known, that the foundation for this record lies; a dozen or so of his works – the poems for which he found posthumous fame – set to music by some of this country’s finest roots players.

The likes of Mia Dyson, The Yearlings, Jeb Cardwell, Matt Walker and Sean McMahon bring their roots nous to the melancholy writings of Frank, helping paint a vivid, albeit sparse, picture of life in this country in a time when basic survival was uppermost in everyone’s mind.  It’s an album that brings to life a time gone by, and as such, is a small piece of history in its own right.

Samuel J. Fell

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