Thistletown
After a great day singing on the streets of Penzance, we found ourselves invited to sing with some other bands, later in the evening. The venue was a room in which was made the first announcement of victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. It was an incredibly velvet and chandeliered room, filled with the memory of triumph and celebration.
We sung before Thistletown, again ignoring the offered mics to try and fill the room with the sound of voices without translation. It was a good go, and people were happy to listen and bob along.
Then Thistletown played, a cloud-borne fairy castle of twisting medieval dreams.
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We expect every reviewer enjoys writing about this band, as they permit such flowery prose.
Beside this, they are exemplary musicians, instrumentalists of rare quality and playfulness. We had a great night, meeting the trad youth of Kernow.
Based in Falmouth, Ben and Lydia gave us their number, to call them when we walked back to Falmouth. We had avoided Falmouth on the way to Penzance, as we had engaged on a 46 mile day and night march to get to Penwith. We took it all a lot slower on our way out.
So in Falmouth we rung the number, and spent beautiful days with the band, on their boat and in their other haunts.
They are apparently now disbanded. They met success with the backing of a Guardian journalist, who was given money by the paper to set up a cottage record label. But the projection into the world of album sales and national reviews was perhaps uneasy. They were billed as every hippy’s dream, the bearded and ethereal answer to modern woes, and given high profile performances, and then there was the money issues to deal with.
The band has now branched into separate endeavours, which although sad to hear, will doubtless bring new and mighty fruit in the near future.
Their album, Rosemarie, is a beautiful disc of Cornish magic. Bag a copy, if you can.
