Lancastrian Rob St John has been on my radar for a while with his creaking, stripped back psych-folk recordings, but I’ve always found his songs a little too sparse for me to fully embrace. By reworking the traditional song of his county in Charcoal Black and the Bonny Grey, however, I have finally found a path into his sound. This was a song of the industrial revolution originally sung to Cecil Sharp by J Collinson of Casterton, Lancashire in 1905, and is the sound of worlds colliding. A world of folk music traditions , with movements of urgency, and waves of depression for the era that is now disappearing. It doesn’t hurt that this was recorded and mixed in Matthew of Song, by Toad fame’s living room up in Edinburgh either, giving it that true DIY feel.
I say Charcoal Black has offered me a path into Rob St John’s music, because the B-side of the record, Shallow Brown, is more the sound with which he found success with his debut album Weald back in 2011, and after falling for Charcoal Black I was ready to embrace that solemn sound as well.
