Search - Steeleye Span :: Tempted & Tried

Late eighties reunion album

Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 06/16/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I agree that Steeleye Span's best years were the early years, when they recorded and toured regularly together, but this album has much to commend it. Recorded (it seems) to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of their original formation, this is an album full of contrasts with one disappointing track. The songs are a mix of traditional and original songs. Death is a common theme - about half the songs here are about death in one form or another.



The album opens with Jack Hall, a song about a man facing execution. Two butchers, a traditional song, is about two men on horseback who hear cries of distress from nearby woods. One of the men thinks it a trap but the other believes the cries are genuine. Find out what happens for yourself. Next is Padstow, a bright and cheerful traditional song about the May Day festivities in that Cornish seaside resort.



The standard of the album remains high for First house in Connaught / Sailor's bonnet (a reels medley) followed by Betsy Bell and Mary Gray (about two Scottish women who die of the plague), Shaking of the sheets (about a funeral ceremony), Searching for lambs (about a shepherd falling in love) and Seagull (about the old game of shove-penny).



The disappointment is The cruel mother, which comes across as a monotonous dirge but could have been brilliant. It is about a mother who kills her new-orn baby. When the mother eventually dies, she turns up at the gates of Heaven where she meets the child that she killed. The mother doesn't recognize the child but the child recognizes the mother. Unfortunately, the verse about the killing and the verse about the mother attempting to enter Heaven are treated as one long verse while the concluding lines about the mother's punishment are scarcely audible. I assume that they were trying to dramatize the song but their efforts completely backfired. I had to study the lyrics carefully to figure out what the song was about.



Following me (about a stalker) comes next. The album closes with The fox, an interesting original song about foxhunting, taken from the perspective of a confident fox who expects to win the battles against the horses and hounds.



In many ways, this is a brilliant album although not quite up to the standard of their seventies music. However, I am obliged to remove one star for The cruel mother."