While watching the Celtic rock band Annwn (pronounced AH-noon) perform live in Sacramento on Saturday evening, I realized I was seeing a group of musicians just steps away from widespread acceptance.
Take the best parts of Jethro Tull, toss in a liberal dose of incendiary guitar and white-hot fiddle, add some George Clinton funk and jazzy swing and you get a danceable, foot-tapping, thoughtful CD like Anarchy & Rapture, released Saturday.
Anarchy shows a band that is evolving towards radio play, and larger venues. From the core of fiddler and lead vocalist Leigh Ann Hussey and rhythm guitarist and singer Elton Wildermuth, Annwn has gradually added members to the rock-solid unit it is today.
Billie Mandel (a.k.a. the flute goddess), late of the Stanford Band, joined Annwn on their last offering, the acoustic-oriented Come Away to the Hills, and lends her delicate and precise flute and high vocals. Bassist Russell Pickett, who sat in on a track on Come Away, plays all of Anarchy and adds the foundation. The multi-talented Larry the O sits behind the drum kit, and sings when threatened.
But perhaps the most impressive addition to Annwn is lead guitar player Brian Hill, who melds a dazzling variety of influences into his own style. From a rock and blues background, Hill incorporates the jazzy style and classical phrasing that seems to focus Annwn into a unit. One can pick out Walter Becker crunch, David Gilmore soar and Larry Carlton jazz in Hill's playing. The interplay between Hill's six-string and Hussey's midi-linked fiddle live is impressive to say the least.
Together, Anarchy is a breakthrough for Annwn (Welsh for the other worlds, where fairies and gods live): rocking and thoroughly enjoyable, yet it retains enough of the old Irish/English Celtic feel that you can still smell the earth and moss if you try.
The CD opens with the Hussey composition "Black Eye, Yellow Eye", one of the disk's strongest tracks, and showcases the fiddler's powerful voice, capable of a whisper or a roar. It is followed by the traditional Sound of Mull coupled with Ian Lowthian-penned Return to the Stewartry.
A pair of adaptations of traditional ballads, "She Moved Through the Fair" and "The Foggy Dew" are next. After "the reel set", Mandel sings her own composition, "Awakening", which makes one wonder how she wakes up in the morning. Another traditional tune, "The Blacksmith", is next.
Hussey sings a dreamy, ethereal cover of David Crosby's "Triad", and on this track Annwn really shines. Hill's fills and The O's light touch on the brushes coupled with some nice keyboard textures makes "Triad" a gem. [Note from Elton: those "keyboard fills" were Brian's guitar.]
The uptempo rocker "Follow Me Up to Carlow" had the audience thrusting their collective fist in the air on the chorus of the traditional war ditty, about Ireland's fight against English opression ("would you [let] a Saxon cock crow out upon an Irish rock? Fly up and teach him manners!")
Annwn bids goodnight with "The Parting Glass", but fools us with an added rouser "Whiskey is the Devil," a few minutes after "Glass" ends.
Obviously a hallmark of surprises to come from this enjoyable, talented Bay Area group. Continued evolution can only lead to bigger and better things for Annwn.
Anarchy and Rapture as well as earlier Annwn recordings are available from Elf Hill Music & Mayhem, 2455 Ashby Avenue, Berkeley, California, 94705. The group can be contacted electronically at fiddler@elfhill.com. The website is http://www.elfhill.com.
copyright 1997 David Wellborn
reprinted by permission of the Oroville
Mercury-Register