Bloody Men

by

Steeleye Span

Edit

This is Steeleye Span's nineteenth (!) studio album. I am giving it three stars, but I want to let it be very clearly known that these are the most *relative* three stars ever endowed upon anything. They are granted in recognition of the facts that the album has some admittedly fairly entertaining moments, and that it's not a complete artistic disaster, as They Called Her Babylon was.

The best thing here is "Bonny Black Hair," by far the dirtiest thing the band's ever done. It's kind of refreshing to here them singing about casual sex with none of the crippling shame/stigma that typically haunts their work on the subject. "The 3 Sisters" is vaguely catchy, as is "Demon of the Well." "Whummil Bore" is intriguingly elliptical. The five-part "Ned Ludd," comprising the second disc, isn't great, but it's not terrible either, and you've got to appreciate that the band can still embark on something so ambitious after all these years. The first part even puts to music words by John Clare, which is pretty cool. Overall, the verdict is this: none of the songs make me want to fling myself down a steep embankment. That's more than can be said for TCHB.

However--and this cannot be emphasized strongly enough--if this were one of the band's classic seventies albums, giving it two stars would be extremely generous. The appeal of Steeleye Span was that they offered highly evocative renditions of Olde Englishe folke songes, with imaginative and highly memorable arrangements. Apart from the inexplicably excellent Time, none of their post-seventies albums have done much to recapture this dynamic, and Bloody Men offers only the most faint, barely-audible echo of the band's former greatness. Some may call this judgment unfair, but I assure you, it is entirely accurate. Please call to mind some of the band's best classic songs--"Copshawholme Fair," "King Henry," "Sheep-Crook and Black Dog," "Cam Ye O'er Frae France," "Boys of Bedlam," "False Knight on the Road," "Little Sir Hugh," "Demon Lover," "Edwin," "Drink Down the Moon," "Montrose," I could seriously go on all day--and then try to tell me with a straight face that anything from Bloody Men comes anywhere near to touching them. Even the (pointless) remake of "Cold, Haily, Windy, Night" doesn't come close.

So basically, while not completely worthless, this is an album for true diehards only. It's impossible for me to imagine anyone who doesn't already have the rest of the band's catalogue finding anything at all edifying here. If you're not already acquainted with the Span experience, check out Below the Salt and Commoner's Crown, and work backwards and forwards from there, approaching the band's many reunion albums (always excepting Time) with extreme caution. If you do this, you may ultimately end up getting some modest enjoyment out of Bloody Men, but it's certainly not a major artistic achievement by any standard.