IT'S JO AND DANNY - The Quickening

Just like the protagonist of "High Fidelity", there isn't a single fan of what Nick Hornby would call "pop music" who hasn't at some point tried their hand at putting together their own compilations, to be inflicted on unsuspecting victims forced, against their will, to discover bands with improbable and reliably obscure names… At the dawn of the new millennium, my personal compilations would invariably feature a track written by a pair of picturesque English hippies, titled "The Ones With Open Mouths". Over acoustic textures of gentle melodies in the vein of Belle & Sebastian, pulses and sighs of minimal, homemade electronics took root, capable of swelling into unexpected crescendos, as if in an impossible marriage between the least fashionable Beth Orton and the most artisanal Beta Band, officiated on a spring day by the singer-songwriter loops of David Kitt. "The ones with open hearts are the first to bleed," they whispered. And it really was a marvel to leave you open-mouthed.

The duo, made up of Jo Bartlett and Danny Hagan, who had been active in various capacities on the music scene for two decades by then and are, incidentally, also husband and wife, went simply by the name It's Jo And Danny, and in 2000 had just released their first record, which already announced in its title the couple's ironic self-portrait: "Lank Haired Girl To Bearded Boy". The cover of that delicate, dazzling debut, which playfully nodded to Dylan's "Bringing It All Back Home", immediately conveyed the intimate, confiding feeling of being at home, with that room cluttered with old vinyl, acoustic guitars and cups of tea.

Five years have now passed since then, and Jo and Danny have swapped the frenzy of London for the more placid mountains of Wales, where every year they organize the Green Man Festival, whose recent editions have featured Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Joanna Newsom and Alasdair Roberts.

After revisiting their electronic-acoustic formula with mixed fortunes across a couple of albums ("Thugs Lounge" in 2001 and "But We Have The Music" in 2003), It's Jo And Danny decided to turn the page, setting aside any digital ambitions to immerse themselves in the purest atmospheres of British folk. For "The Quickening", their new record, they enlisted the Scottish folk group Daimh, as well as percussionist Des Morgan and guitarist Rudy Carroll, who had already stood by their side back in the Eighties in their shared adventure with Bluetrain, and recorded at Bark Studios in London a handful of ballads with a bucolic, timeless spirit.

Unfortunately, though, the English duo's music, stripped of its more oblique and intriguing component, seems to have lost all of its charm along the way too, drifting along in a velvety monotony that never manages to capture the listener's attention.

Jo's thin, fable-narrator voice weaves strands of female singer-songwriting that all too openly recall the models of Joni Mitchell and Carole King, while the muffled, rural warmth of the arrangements aims to revive the days of Fairport Convention. There are country-dance fiddles, barely-touched percussion (including the traditional Irish bodhran), soft arpeggios and hushed backing vocals: but the effect is to spread a kind of vague torpor all around, like a winter's day spent in front of the crackling fireplace of a country house. And the postcard-Celtic flavours that peek out in tracks like "Swollen River", "Testing Me" and "Real Thing" bring to mind "Titanic" more than the Waterboys.

In short, the intimate elegance of "The Quickening" always lacks the decisive spark needed to leave a mark, like certain records born during the short-lived neo-acoustic binge of the late Nineties, inevitably destined to be forgotten the day after their release.

Along the thread of ballads strung together by Jo and Danny, the melodic ideas of "Seasoned", "In Spite Of Love" and "Dying Kiss" emerge, along with the slightly livelier pace of "Spoken Word" and the pensive, existential lyrics of "God's Closed His Eyes" and "Testing Me", right through to the dark tones of the closing "Room 220". But these are nuances that struggle to stand out against the overall monochrome of an album too mannered to reach the heart.

All that's left is to hope that Danny soon goes back to tinkering with his electronic toys: the folk garb of "The Quickening" risks turning his partnership with Jo into an emotionless ménage.

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14/11/2012