Norman Blake
The Fields of November / Old and New

THE REVIEW

Translating an emotion felt through one of the five senses is one of the most difficult tasks in nature. Knowing how to describe a visual experience, a scent, a taste, or a sound in words is a privilege reserved for a few. Just like translating into music the gray melancholy that arises from the spectacle of November fields. A cello, a fiddle, and a guitar, like a slow sonic mural, transform this emotion into music, and conclude an album of 11 original compositions, of which 6 are purely instrumental.

In his second solo album, Norman Blake indeed immerses himself entirely in composition, gifting us, for the first (and I believe only) time, a work devoid of traditionals and entirely dedicated to his original pieces.

In my opinion, the best moments are, besides the track that gives the album its title, "Green Leaf Fancy," with its serene rustic mood, and "Last Train From Poor Valley," a poetic ballad describing life in a (former) mining town now on the verge of becoming a ghost town. The closed mines, the unemployment, the bread lines, leading to the inevitable emigration of the protagonist, accompanied by the soft snows of December falling gently all around, until the train taking her away, toward the border, slowly disappears from view heading towards the horizon. The choice seems to be to set aside, for most of the album, the guitar virtuosity, which in many tracks would objectively be out of place, to allow for slower and more poetic passages. The only exceptions are "Coming Down From Rising Fawn" and "The Old Brown Case."

"Old And New," however, is a decidedly different album. It includes some original ballads, among which "Billy Gray" stands out, some traditional ballads, including "Sweet Heaven," several guitar transpositions of pieces conceived for the violin (especially "Miller's Reel"); moreover, we begin to see the first signs of change, heralding a drastic shift towards so-called "cultured" music that will come with the albums of the 1979-1984 five-year span. The number of instruments used begins to grow, with Norman performing on guitar, mandolin, dobro, banjo, fiddle, viola, all with extreme naturalness.

It makes one think that his greatest asset is making difficult things seem easy. Listening to his music, one might imagine a sweaty, fervent guy, hunched over and intent on extracting the soul from the guitar. Yet, anyone who has seen him play (there are several videos of his performances on YouTube, though more recent and more "calm") will have noticed his extreme naturalness and relaxation in performing tracks at any speed, always giving the impression of not wanting to overdo it, not reducing his technique to a form of narcissism, but always keeping it at the service of music, of cleanliness, and clarity of sounds.

One last mention I would like to dedicate to the very strange "Ajimina": in this short piece (barely 2 minutes), it seems our friend wanted only to challenge the seemingly insurmountable laws of physics, using a speed that stuns upon first impact (and even on subsequent ones), just to see what's beyond that limit set for the human ear and mind.

He will let us know!