SHOVEL DANCE COLLECTIVE

The Water Is The Shovel Of The Shore (Memorials Of Distinction/Double Dare)

Folk music, traditional or otherwise, need not be preserved in amber, nor ought it be. Yet it’s true that many efforts to update the form sacrifice its essential qualities. The nine members of London’s Shovel Dance Collective are as good a model for how to simultaneously advance and uphold folk as I’ve heard in years, and debut album The Water Is The Shovel Of The Shore (following a Bandcamp compilation and a split cassette with one of their own members, banjo innovator Jacken Elswyth) is a blood-stirring 60 minutes.

Its instrumentation is solely from the trad trunk, with dulcimer, whistle and shruti box accompanying sinewy vocal harmonising, but SDC offers very modern social and political resonance on The Water Is The Shovel Of The Shore, divided into four sections each containing multiple songs and field recordings. Its title, and the album’s broad aqueous theme, also carry a deeper message relating to colonialism, capitalism, and the legacy thereof. Wonderful music, even better witnessed live.

words NOEL GARDNER