Music Arcades: Alasdair Roberts: Farewell Sorrow

To put my cards on the table: I think Alasdair Roberts is one of the great artists in music of this decade. (Right now, The Clientele are the only people who come close.) At the time I bought this LP, however, at a gig of his at the ICA on 11 February 2004, the Appendix Out EP was the only work of Alasdair's that I owned, and I felt that he hadn't been as good when I saw him live (at Cambridge Folk Festival in 2003, and at the ICA a week later) as he ought to have been.

Both live performances and recordings have improved since then, and it was last year's brilliant Amber Gatherers album that sent me back to this one, which I've now paid for twice — once on vinyl in 2004 and again from emusic in 2007.

Several of Roberts' albums, I've noticed having recurring themes or names. In this case drinking, hunting and fighting feature strongly, as does a woman (or is she?) called Polly.

In I Fell in Love, Polly's body is picked apart and made into musical instruments (the hair a bow, the skull a drum, and so on).
In I Went Hunting, Polly shapeshifts into a gosling.
Come My Darling, Polly has Alasdair using Polly's body as an instrument of lust, and vice-versa. Her beauty, he sings, could tame the wild beasts — but he implies that taming is not on the menu, for no girdle will constrain Polly's libido and no bridle will stay her tongue.
By The Whole House is Singing Polly is a bird/song on the wing.
And in I Am a Young Man Alasdair is a hedonist wracked by self-loathing, telling Polly, "You could not convincingly call me a man."

The import of all this is inscrutable, but all the more engaging and attractive for being so.