(2021) Green Diesel - After Comes the Dark



Review:
Based around Faversham, Kent, English folk band Green Diesel features Ellen Care (lead vocals/violin), Matt Dear (lead guitar/vocals), Paul Dadswell (drums/vocals), Ben Holliday (bass) and Greg Ireland (guitar, bouzouki, dulcimer, mandolin, keyboards, percussion, vocals). After Comes the Dark is their fourth album, their first as a quintet and making frequent use of 12-string guitar, combines both original and traditional material. Their punchy, electric approach is often evocative of early Steeleye Span and veined with prog-rock and influences drawn from early Genesis and the ’70s psych-folk Canterbury scene with acts like Caravan and Kevin Ayres. They kick off with the Ireland-penned near six-minute ‘Follow the River’, a staple of their live set inspired by the power of water and driven by a circling drum beat and muscular guitar behind Care’s striking resonant vocals and violin. Ending on an ebbing, mantra-like coda, it’s followed by one of her own, Northern Frisk, a rumbling bassline laying down the foundation upon which the violin etches a hornpipe tune (a useful comparison in terms of its urgency and intensity might be Span’s Thomas The Rhymer or Blackleg Miner) designed to conjure undead spirits whirring in a dancing frenzy. Appropriately, it leads into the album’s instrumental, Dusty Fairies, a medley of the lurching violin-led King of The Fairies (reminiscent of Stackridge’s Slark opus) and rousing, drum clattering, pizzicato violin 3/2 hornpipes Dusty Miller and Rusty Gulley with Care’s father on concertina. Striking a medieval troubadour note, Ireland’s Sea Song slows the tempo down for a slow, rolling rhythm and a lyric that nods to the traditional balladry of heartbreak and loneliness. In contrast, sporting an array of shifting time signatures and electric guitar solo, I Wish My Love is a genuine traditional, hailing from the north-east and also known as The Pitman’s Love Song, the dirge-like reading based here on Lisa Knapp’s recording of it as I Wish My Love Was A Cherry. Holliday marks his first composition for the band with The White Hart, strapping on guitar. At the same time, Ireland takes over bass duties, bringing a psychedelic drone and marching beat feel to proceedings, a song about resilience and grace in the face of adversity and inspired by a friend struggle with a fatal illness, the guitar-dominated instrumental outro taking its cue from the work Espers, Mellow Candle and perhaps a touch of Mike Oldfield. The band’s most recent recruit, Dadswell, formerly of acid folk outfit Galley Beggar, wrote the slow march swaying, guitar chiming Underworld, a heady, moody track inspired by Philip Glass’s Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack with a lyric about having to choose between staying cocooned in a fantasy or addiction and living in the reality of the present and future. The second traditional number arrives with a spritely reading of Katy Cruel that emphasises the titular Katy’s defiance rather than her victim status and, while learnt from Lady Maisery, surely has its formative influence again in the work of early Steeleye Span on Ten Man Mop and Below The Salt, indeed the instrumental bridge adopts the old dance tune The Key To The Cellar which Steeleye borrowed for their version of Cam Ye O’er Fae France on Parcel Of Rogues. Another number by Ireland, underpinned by chiming keys, percussive clicks and a circling drum pattern, the tune gradually building, Never Reach The Dawn draws on traditional folk’s night visitor songs with the narrator, sung by Care, visited by a ghost from their past. The set comes to a close with Dear singing lead on his own Storm, Care’s harmonies weaving in and out, a heavy military drum sound and suitably blustery guitar in the service of a song about despair but also resilience in the face of crushing odds. The blast of electronic wind on which it ends overlaps into the intro to Ireland’s playout title track with its heartbeat pulsing drum and pagan rural psychedelia tribal shades evocative of the folk horror emblemised in The Wicker Man on a song that draws together the themes of death, rebirth and the ultimate power of the natural world against which humankind is helpless to resist because, as per the title, “winter comes to every man”. Like the eco-friendly biofuel after which they’re named, drawing on the organic components of their influences, Green Diesel bring a renewable energy source to the world of traditional and progressive folk. Fill your tank.



Track Listing:
01 - Follow the River
02 - Northern Frisk
03 - Dusty Fairies
04 - Sea Song
05 - I Wish My Love
06 - The White Hart
07 - Underworld
08 - Katy Cruel
09 - Never Reach the Dawn
10 - Storm
11 - After Comes the Dark


Media Report:
Genre: folk-rock, psychedelic rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits