Neil Spencer 

Jim Causley: Cyprus Well – review

Jim Causley's settings of distant relative Charles Causley's poems to music have a home-grown, unvarnished charm, writes Neil Spencer
  
  


It took a while for this young Devon folkie to figure just how he was related to the late Cornish poet Charles Causley, but doing so kindled a desire to set his kinsman's words to music. Recorded in the poet's Launceston home, the results pit Causley's rich baritone against accordion, woodwind, fiddle and harp. The sound is unvarnished, with a wonky home piano too prominent, but the performances are spirited and the words, from a poet admired by Betjeman and Hughes, polished. Alongside the beloved Timothy Winters come the Christmas tale A Song of Truth and pieces such as Rattler Morgan dyed in West Country fatalism.

 

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