AFTER the nouvelle cuisine of her flashy but insubstantial major label debut Angels And Cigarettes, folk punk sprite Eliza Carthy has gone back to English basics on her return to Topic.
She may have re-located to Edinburgh from the Waterson:Carthy family firm at Robin Hood's Bay - hence the sleeve says "Made In Scotland From Girders" - but Carthy's Anglicana album was inspired by her love of traditional English material in Topic's 20-volume Voice Of The People series. "The album is an expression of Englishness as I feel it," she says, and she expresses those feelings through songs of the sea, surging songs of sex and violence and travel, played with acoustic dynamism on the fiddle and piano and sung with purity and sauce. She calls herself "a modern British musician", and at 26, her bracing revival of ancient song has never sounded more contemporary.
Updated: 10:13 Thursday, November 21, 2002
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