Cargo Records

Sing A Song For You

Fleeting, volatile, flighty, breathless: a flash of sunlight in the glade. Anne Briggs' pure, unmistakable voice and her too short career summon the same images in my mind.

A voice like a gentle tremor, as fragile and timeless as a dandelion clock. Her recordings are few and all the more precious for it. When these 1973 sessions finally saw the sunshine, back in 1996, they were greeted with joy; joy mixed with astonishment that they should have been consigned to obscurity in the first place. Sure, her work with Ragged Robin may have displeased the purists of the time. Sure, Anne Briggs was unhappy with her voice, heavily pregnant with new life and on her way to a Scottish retreat. But for something so beautiful as these songs to be casually put asideAnd they are beautiful. Sunshine and time: flitting snatches of melody heard floating across the meadow on some impossible summers day. Songs that are ancient as the bones of the hills - yet half are Anne's own compositions. The distillation of a unique talent let fly like a butterfly from the hand.