Allister Thompson - Ancestors (2024)

Ancestors is the second collection of folk songs from Great Britain and Ireland from the prolific Canadian musician Allister Thompson. Over the last twelve years, he has self-released a multitude of albums, primarily as the Gateless Gate, but also as Twilight Fields, Sons of Birches, Khan Teghri and under his own name, drawing from psychedelia, prog and post rock, kosmische music, acid folk, ambient drone, dream pop and whatever else he is moved by. Ancestors is a particularly personal project for him: the music of the British folk revival – including that of the folk-rock bands like Fairport Convention and the Albion Band – was his first musical love and inspiration, and part of his roots as the child of British emigrants.

Part of the appeal of Ancestors is that Allister is not a folk singer, nor does he try to be. Whilst there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the mimicry, the faux-rustic affectations, or the occasional nasality of the folk revival, none of it is compulsory, and there is something refreshing about hearing those songs interpreted by a man who could be singing with a Canterbury Scene prog-rock outfit, or even a mid-80s English indie band with a couple of singles on Sarah Records.

The actual sound of the album is also several steps removed from established folk norms: Allister plays guitar – but not necessarily ‘folk’ guitar – along with a smattering of bass, keyboards, synth and percussion. He is joined by his sister, Samantha Thompson, on harp and by Zoe Thiessen on fiddle. Their contributions are crucial to the album’s warm, yearning shimmer but, again, are not wilfully folk-centric. This, I would contend, is a good thing. There has never been one correct way to present these songs, which this album makes abundantly clear.

Opener Black Eyed Sailor is driven by a low-key Byrdsian guitar motif and Zoe Theissen’s beautiful fiddle work, which is more alt-country era Walkabouts than Steeleye Span. Polly on the Shore has chiming a psych-folk undertow and is cloaked in a palpable sense of longing. Welsh song The Ash Grove is a contender for a lost Bagpuss soundtrack outtake – another good thing – and taken at a gentler pace than one would usually expect. This track pays homage to Allister’s mum’s Welsh roots and is the first to feature Samantha’s gorgeous harp playing, which dances gracefully around the melancholy of the lyrics.

The Cliffs of Dooneen is a song that is easy to clog up with an overabundance of sentimentality: on this version, Allister shows admirable constraint, stripping away the layers to reveal a simple lament. The New York Trader, with a sound owing more to the Owl Service or early Memory Band than to Lankum’s recent version, is underscored by warmly fuzzed-out psychedelic guitar and a quietly ecstatic countermelodic fiddle. Austin John Mitchell’s beautiful Whitsun Dance tips its hat to Tim Hart’s version from Summer Solstice but is transported by Samantha’s ethereal backing vocals. This song isn’t sung often enough.

The album’s longest track, and for me, its centrepiece, is the Unfortunate Mother, a variation on the Cruel Mother. This is the only song on Ancestors where Allister has written a new tune, and it is one that lends the story an urgency and a sense of unsettling dread that the rather pedestrian traditional tune doesn’t entirely convey. The sibling harmonies and the interweaving of harp and guitar bring to mind the psych folk revivalists of the early 2000s – Prydwyn, In Gowan Ring – but as if they were soundtracking a rediscovered fragment from a long-lost folk horror movie.

These songs, along with similarly enchanting versions of the Lark in the Morning, The Factory Girl and Matty Groves, come together to make a very coherent and satisfying whole that gets better at each listen. For sure, it’s a selection of songs which most folk enthusiasts will have heard many times before, but what sets this album apart is that they don’t sound like they did on those versions you’ve already heard. Allister’s earliest musical recollection is of his parents playing their Steeleye Span albums – Ancestors is a loving reconstruction of those shards of memory to create a work that exists as much as a concept album about folk music as an actual folk album. And that is yet another good thing.