Review of Defending Ancient Springs, start-of-year column

The anonymous review opens a column written at the start of 2000: the beginning of the year is quiet because new releases are slow to arrive, so it is a good moment to look back at the best CDs of 1999. First comes Jackie Leven, whose album Defending Ancient Springs (Cooking Vinyl, made with David Thomas) only just qualifies as a 2000 release. The writer recalls that Leven played at the end of the Wessex Poetry Festival in 1997 and toured as support for Bruce Cockburn around that time, noting “some similarities” between the two. Originally from Fife, Leven is no newcomer, but after years of being strangely ignored his latest album is receiving favourable attention.

The sepia-coloured sleevenotes, the reviewer says, trace the title to an idea of the poet Kathleen Raine and include quotations from John Burnside, Antonio Machado and Juan Ramón Jiménez (in Robert Bly's translation), Rumi and Mandelstam. It is odd for a singer-songwriter to open with a cover version, here the Righteous Brothers' “You've Lost That Loving Feeling”, but it has a “strange edginess” that sets a bleak tone for the rest.

The album took several plays to get into, partly because the lyrically very strong songs are hindered by the varied mix of sounds around Leven's soulful vocals: a full band on most tracks, occasional brass, orchestra, backing vocals, clanking industrial effects and spoken word. It is worth persevering. The title track and the setting of a poem by Marina Tsvetayeva, “Hand Is Pale With Holy Kisses”, are particularly haunting, and the spare acoustic “Your Winter Days” is, for the reviewer, the best track of all. The verdict: plenty of loss and pain on this fine album, even menace in the closing “Morbid Sky”, and a soulful lyricism that shines through.