Various Artists - Love, Loss & Liberty: The Songs of Alistair Hulett (Alistair Hulett Memorial Trust, 2011)

Released to coincide with the first anniversary of Alistair Hulett's sudden passing, this album is a celebration of Alistair's music, lyrics and political passion. It features a mix of previously released and specially recorded songs, ranging in date from 1989 to the present. Many of the artists involved are better-known than Alistair.


This well-paced compilation opens with James Fagan and Nancy Kerr, taking on 'Sons of Liberty'. It's a fresh take on the song that comes out sounding like it was written in the bushranging days that it describes. Next is the classic cover of Alistair's best-known song, 'He Fades Away' by June Tabor. There have been several versions of this song, but June Tabor's sparse and mournful version stands above them. It never fails to give me the chills. Rory McLeod applies his rhythmic, percussive guitar style (electric on this occasion) to 'Don't Sign Up for War'. Gone are the Glaswegian idioms, as Rory makes this a song that can be understood by all. David Rovics, meanwhile, contributes a scathing version of 'Behind Barbed Wire'. It's amazing to consider the power of folk music: here's an American singer telling the world about injustices taking place in a migrant detention centre in Sydney, Australia.


One of Alistair Hulett's particular strengths was his ability to write songs from a woman's point of view. 'No Half Measures' is the heartbreaking tale of a woman watching her husband drink himself to death, and the Niamh Parsons version here is a chilling reading of the song. Likewise, you could believe that Alistair wrote 'Mrs Barbour's Army' specifically with the voice of Sheena Wellington in mind. Sheena's raw a capella version is an authentic-sounding tribute to Mary Barbour and the Glasgow rent strikers of 1915.


The legendary Roy Bailey performs admirably on 'When the Small Birds Start Leaving', Alistair's empathetic look at modern-day gypsies in England. The treatment of 'The Dark Loch' by Alasdair Roberts with Donald Lindsay and Clutch Daisy is one of the highlights for me. The small pipes are a mournful and fitting accompaniment that bring tears to my eyes. The album is building momentum here, and the storming version of 'Among Proddy Dogs and Papes' by the Jason Wilson Band is followed up by a fiery yet laidback rendition of 'Militant Red' by Sigarro of Banda Bassotti and Pierluigi 'Piggio' Placido. This one, sung in a heavy Italian accent, shows just how far and wide Alistair's music has reached.


Just when you're thinking how much you miss Alistair's wonderful voice, there it is: the rocking version of 'The Day The Boys Came Down' that Alistair recorded with Sydney City Trash in 2005. A great singalong that segues nicely into the newly recorded Handsome Young Strangers' take on 'The Swaggies Have All Waltzed Matilda Away'. It's a magical version that is up there with the best work of the Bushwackers.


The album reaches its climax with the most famous Roaring Jack cover of all. Canada's Irish Rovers brought Alistair's music to a wider audience in 1989, with its surprisingly rocked-out version of 'Buy Us A Drink'. This version led to a landslide of Canadian covers of this song, which has become something of a standard over there.

Alistair often finished his shows with his rousing version of 'The Internationale', and what better way to complete this album? Alistair's version has no equal, so the compilers chose to use that. Like vintage port after a good meal, this is a fitting finale to a wonderful celebration of Alistair Hulett. The number of classic Alistair Hulett songs and the esteem in which Alistair Hulett is held in the folk community mean that this will not be the only Hulett tribute album. Here's to many more.

Love, Loss and Liberty: The Songs of Alistair Hulett can be purchased from the Alistair Hulett website. All proceeds will be directed to the Alistair Hulett Memorial Fund.

The Malkies – Suited and Booted (Limbo, 2008)

In the street slang of Glasgow, a malky can be either a sharp knife or a not-so-sharp person. These malkies definitely come complete with a pointy edge. It’s Alistair Hulett with a band – predominantly acoustic instruments augmented with bass and drums – for the first time since the days of Roaring Jack. The hectic pace and volume of Roaring Jack are no longer with us, and we’re left with a band of talented instrumentalists on top of their game and lyrics and vocals that really shine.

We’re treated to a mix of Alistair Hulett originals, traditional tunes and covers of a few 20th century folk classics. Roaring Jack fans will recognise quite a few songs in the Malkies’ repertoire, starting with the opening track ‘Buy Us a Drink’. This is a laid-back and almost reverent reading of what we fondly remember as a raucous, shameless drinking song. Alistair still sings with passion about living in a ‘shitty old hole’, unlike those Canadian folkies who cleaned up this song for mass consumption! This version works itself into a neat little groove, before departing suddenly to make way for ‘Out in the Danger Zone’. Though missing the Uillean pipes that made the version on The Back Streets of Paradise so moving, the new rendition still manages to hit hard. Great slide guitar and Rachel Goodwin‘s sweet harmony vocals add a new dimension. Rachel’s only a guest on this album, but she adds so much that it’d be great to see her to join the band on a permanent basis.

‘High Germany’ is a traditional song that’s lifted into the 21st century thanks to the haunting slide guitar and Hugh Bradley’s atmospheric double bass. ‘Playing for the Traffic’ gets a western swing treatment with a strolling beat that certainly matches the mood of the song. Alistair has cleaned up the lyrics somewhat: the ‘penny pinching bastards’ are now ‘penny pinching skivers’, but that’s OK because it rhymes with ‘nine to fivers’!

‘Are There Honky Tonks in Heaven’ was always a live fave at Roaring Jack gigs. Here’s a version that rocks in a much quieter way, but still kicks butt. Phil Snell features prominently on the mandolin, but thanks to the wonders of modern technology Phil’s fiddle and lap steel can also be heard blazing through the song.

‘The Wife of Usher’s Well’ was for me a highlight of Alistair’s shows with Dave Swarbrick in Sydney last year. This version features intricate finger-picking and an emotive vocal performance from Hulett over Hugh Whitaker’s helter-skelter beat.

On Riches and Rags, Hulett stirred a traditional Scots flavour into a swag of American blues and folk songs. This recipe carries over into some of the tracks on Suited and Booted. There’s a furious driving beat on Woody Guthrie’s ‘Pastures of Plenty’, contrasting with the eerie slide guitar that works brilliantly to convey the sparseness and isolation of the lyrics. This is a tremendous version that is up there with the work that Billy Bragg and Wilco did on Woody’s unreleased material in the late 1990s. One of the standout tracks. A well-interpreted cover of Pete Seeger’s ‘Quite Early Morning’ similarly bears the feel of Riches and Rags. Its carefree breezy mood will have you swatting flies and drinking whiskey on the porch (even if you don’t have a porch).

The cross-pollination on Suited and Booted often goes the other way, with the Malkies injecting an Americana flavour into some iconic Scots folk songs. Like ‘The Road to Dundee’, with its beautiful slide guitar providing a counterpunch to Hulett’s hillbilly finger-pickin’. ‘The Overgate’ is another traditional Scots ballad that gets the Americana-style treatment, and comes out the better for it. This is one song that is no doubt very powerful in a live setting.

There are never enough versions of ‘The Day the Boys Came Down’, in my view one of Hulett’s greatest tunes. This version features a hard-hitting snare drum and a bluesier feel than heard previously on The Cat Among the Pigeons and The Cold Grey Light of Dawn.

The album closes with a stirring folk-rock version of ‘The Internationale’ that eclipses not only Hulett’s earlier version, but probably Billy Bragg’s as well.

This is an assured debut from a band that is probably still finding its own voice. All the Hulett originals are songs we know and love, so it will be interesting to see if Alistair writes new songs tailor-made for the Malkies. The other members of the band are talented in their own right, so perhaps we can look forward to some inspired collaboration in the songwriting department. It will be a thrill to watch this band grow and develop its own unique audience, just as Roaring Jack did all those years ago.