Morgan McKay – Winters Turn

A collection of English, Scottish and Irish traditional ballads and tunes are presented by Morgan McKay with convincing simplicity and competence. Most songs will be familiar to regular members of the ‘folk community’: ‘Lord Franklin’, ‘Planxty Irwin’, ‘The Cruel Mother’ and so on. Others, like ‘As Sylvie Was Walking’ (collected in Moonee Ponds in Melbourne), ‘When I Was Young’ and ‘Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still’ are perhaps less well known. But they deserve wider circulation and hopefully this CD will provide that. McKay has a great and resonant voice, which is sympathetically suited to these songs. His guitar playing accompanies and complements the voice well, and also stands fi rmly on its own in the instrumental pieces, where it picks up the patterns of harp and pipe music. A concertina leads on the start of the fi nal track (a Morris tune) and I assume this is McKay as well – the lack of sleeve notes are the only fault I can ascribe. No great surprises here, but you get what you hope for: an enjoyable rendition of this tradition.
Review by Roger Holdsworth