Queen Of The Whirl is a celebration of thirty years of silliness and profundity; thirty years of music reimagined, from Billy Bragg to Peggy Seeger, from The Ratcatchers to Imagined Village, from bloody boots in Trafalgar Square to the moors of North Yorkshire, and everywhere in between.
This year, multi-award-winning Eliza Carthy MBE, celebrates 30 years as a professional musician with the release of Queen of The Whirl, an album of newly recorded versions of some of the most beloved songs from her career. It will be released as a standard CD, Double 12” vinyl, and as a special limited-edition 4 EP deluxe package.
The first single ‘The Snow It Melts The Soonest’ is taken from EP 1, which will be released on 4 August. EP 2 will be released on 1 September, EP 3 on 29 September and EP 4 + the full album on 28 October.
Recorded with her trusty band, The Restitution, these new versions include favourites from her break-though Mercury Music Prize nominated album Red Rice (1998): ‘The Snow it Melts the Soonest,’ ‘Stumbling On’ and ‘Accordion Song.’ Winner of the 2003 Best Album at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards (and also Mercury nominated), Anglicana was born out of Topic Records’ ‘Voice Of the People’ series and from that is ‘Pretty Ploughboy’ the track which became the album’s centrepiece. ‘In London So Fair,’ also from the album, is also featured. The earliest songs included come from the album Eliza Carthy & The Kings of Calicutt – ‘Whirly Whorl’ and ‘Good Morning, Mr Walker.’ The later is a tribute to Eliza’s mother, the late, great Norma Waterson, and Slinger Francisco, also known as The Mighty Sparrow, who wrote and recorded ‘Good Morning, Mr Walker’ in 1968. This new version of ‘Good Morning, Mr Walker’ is the only track in the collection to feature guests, known collectively as The Sweet Rosemarys, who include Jon Boden and John Spiers, Sheema Mukherjee, Rory MacLeod and the Mighty Sparrow’s bandleader himself, Lane Steinberg.
Listening to these new recordings, no matter how familiar the tracks, is to hear the music afresh. Eliza has never been an artist to stand still; rather, she’s been at the forefront of the music scene pushing her way forward – often in the most unconventional way. Queen of The Whirl shows us that her love of traditional music and new ideas is as strong as ever and as she puts it, the whirl keeps going.
The release will be supported by a UK tour in November and December this year.
