My instrument is the drums. I can play the guitar a little, also the bass just a wee bit. Any keyboard instrument is beyond me but even more so the fiddle, or the violin, if you want to go classical.
Any string instrument with a fretless neck is a completely mysterious object to me, especially the fiddle. How do they find the right notes and play them cleanly? How do they manage those tiny finger movements? I’m in awe of fiddlers and violinists.
That is why listening to the new release, The Snake, by Brittany Haas (USA) and Lena Jonsson (Sweden) is such a treat. Both are amazing, versatile fiddlers and have played together many times before, including their first recorded effort in 2015.
That one was pretty folksy and rootsy, Swedish trad meets American hoedown, to simplify a bit. Great fun and skill and energy, grounded in tradition.
The Snake, coming to us nine years later, is different. Of the 12 tunes, nine are originals and few are what you might call trad. Some stray pretty far from the trodden path.
Their debut was a fine showcase for top talent, but The Snake is a work of artists.
It opens with a shipping themed trad set, though, welcoming the folk-loving listener to their company. But already the latter half of the set, Shipping Polska, seems to sound and feel just a bit different than expected.
And it’s followed by the album’s title tune, a musical reptile that slithers and winds its way through themes that sound… not entirely pleasant. The high, almost screeching two-note theme that repeats here and there reminds me of a snake, moving in the grass, forked tongue out. It’s a fascinating, quite a modern piece and a definite departure from any trad frame.
Up next, the B Flat B Tune is fun as it goes constantly up and down the scales with steep glissandoes; it’s like a giddy, dizzying water slide in a theme park.
That’s also one this album’s characteristics: it’s very playful, without any “hey look what we can do” feeling. These two are much too good and experienced for that anyway.
My favorite tune is Lena’s 10 Days of Isolation; the title might indicate something gloomy but it’s a firecracker of a piece, intricately composed but also one of the few really danceable tunes here. Maybe extended isolation can make you manically clean the house or do some other weird things…
The Snake‘s big surprise comes right after that high-energy isolation. Three pieces, a trilogy, really, inspired by J.S. Bach. All three come with a header “Låt efter Bach” which is Swedish for “based on”, or “inspired by”, Bach. The pieces are Vals (Waltz), Visa (Song) and Polska (Polka).
I know that Bach didn’t write any polkas but I wasn’t sure if the pieces were derived from actual Bach compositions, as their Baroque mood is very credible to my amateur ears. I have learned that they are not; they are originals that reflect for the style and even more so the feeling and atmosphere of Bach.
They are excellent music in themselves but I think they come with the added value of showing that the music our age labels as highbrow and elevated was much more down to earth and lively, part of everyday life, in its own time. Brittany and Lena prove that the distance from folk to baroque is almost nonexistent when you approach them with the right mindset. Fab stuff!
The only excuses for avoiding The Snake are a pathological fear of reptiles or an allergy to fiddles. And they are crap excuses, really, because this is music, and two absolutely marvelous musicians.
FolkNotes 