Since the release of her 2002 debut album Beautiful Twisted, British singer and musician Sharron Kraus has firmly established herself as a genuine heiress to the UK folk ancestry of Shirley Collins, Lal Waterson, or Maddy Prior. As a solo artist and in collaboration with like-minded peers Fursaxa, Christian Kiefer, or Espers' Meg Baird and Helena Espvall, Kraus has displayed her comprehensive grasp of English and Appalachian folk traditions, performing with a sparkling clear voice that can sound as ancient and elemental as rain, stone, or soil.
Last year, in addition to her myriad other projects, Kraus contributed a track to the massive UK folk compilation John Barleycorn Reborn, and her current work might be best described by what that collection referred to as "Dark Britannica." On her latest solo album The Fox's Wedding, and with the first album from Rusalnaia, her collaborative duo with Ex-Reverie's Gillian Chadwick, Kraus creates folk music that unabashedly evokes the ancient rites, traditions, and mysteries of pre-Christian England. Her music draws heavily upon the influence of such early music pioneers as David Munrow and his Early Music Consort of London, and so will likely put a portion of its audience immediately in mind of hobbits or BBC costume dramas. Throughout these two albums, however, Kraus and her cohorts are also able to keep themselves fixed in the present, leavening their folk traditions with a healthy working knowledge of past and current underground culture.
With its vivid songcraft and rich instrumental textures, The Fox's Wedding is at once Kraus' most ambitious album to date and her most accessible. Tied intrinsically to the natural world and the rhythm of the seasons, the album represents a song cycle of sorts, following a course of doomed romance (naturally), loss and renewal through a full calendar year. Though all of the songs here are originals, they have the heft and feel of traditional material, particularly as Kraus fills her lyrics with allusions to English pagan folklore on "Robin Is Dead", "Green Man", and "Harvest Moon".
A skilled multi-instrumentalist, Kraus is also accompanied on The Fox's Wedding by an inventive and varied array of strings, woodwinds, and assorted medieval instruments. This allows her to cover an impressive amount of ground, ranging from the simple Appalachian banjo strum of "Would I" to the elegant chamber music of "In the Middle of the Summer" with a deceptive ease. Yet any concern that these songs might just be mannered set pieces should be dispelled in one swoop on the opening "Brigid", which finds Kraus rising up from her genteel surroundings with an unearthly series of shrieks and whoops. It's not Diamanda Galas, exactly, but it is not as far off as one might initially expect.
As a vocalist, Kraus is not as idiosyncratic as contemporaries Joanna Newsom or Josephine Foster, but her distinctive vocals are immediately recognizable. And as she proved on 2006's Leaves From Off the Tree, her album with Espers' Meg Baird and Helena Espvall, she comes naturally to close harmony singing, a trait that again serves her well with Gillian Chadwick in Rusalnaia. Produced by Espers' Greg Weeks, Rusalnaia is more electric and overtly indebted to standard psych-folk than Kraus' solo work, yet it finds Kraus and Chadwick forming a promising if rather tentative new partnership. Named after a form of mischievous water nymph, Rusalnaia's songs of pagan frolic do include the occasional eye-rolling flight of lyrical fantasy. (The self-titled track "Rusalnaia" in particular likely provides more details of fauns, saplings and wreath-making than most listeners will find useful.)
But throughout the album Kraus and Chadwick can sound as though they have been raised since girlhood in the same enchanted meadow, and it can be a treat to hear them share and exchange verses on "The Sailor and the Siren" or the effervescent "Dandelion Wine". Weeks, in his typical fashion, finds the opportunity to interject a few discrete lines of acid guitar and proggy keyboards. The whole ceremony closes with "Wild Summer", a whirling dance which echoes the ecstatic pagan spirit of the traditional "Sumer is Icumen In" performed at the climax of The Wicker Man, as Kraus and company once again pay a affectionate homage to their multiple generations of folk ancestors.
