Broken Sky was made CD Of The Week by The Sunday Herald on Easter Sunday with the following review. It's my first for the album. I hope it bodes well!
Hills of Virginia ****
DAVID FERRARD: Broken Sky (Flamingo West)
By Alan Morrison
BILLY BRAGG recently said that he didn't mind being labelled a political songwriter, "what I object to is being dismissed as a political songwriter". Politics are also a major element of David Ferrard's debut album, but again it would be wrong to pigeonhole this committed anti-war campaigner entirely by his protest output. The 29-year-old half-Scottish, half-American musician (a one-man transatlantic session) has an uncanny ability to fuse meaningful words with gorgeous melodies, winning the Burnsong 2007 competition for the timelessly catchy One Hell Of A Ride.
Given the content of certain songs here, it's no accident that the album first appeared (for download or CD order from www.davidferrard.com) the same week as the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Ferrard, however, wasn't in his home town when his album was released; he was researching in the Woody Guthrie archives in New York City. How appropriate, given the kindred spirit that has passed from Guthrie, through decades of the protest movement, down into almost every track on Broken Sky.
Set in the midst of the album's crystal-clear production, Ferrard's voice is closer to Joan Baez than Bob Dylan, and certainly not in the bar-room troubadour style of, say, Dick Gaughan. His vocal delivery is sincere but never over-earnest, while his music draws from both sides of his mixed roots, placing American country fiddles alongside gentle acoustic guitar.
The album's standout track, Hills Of Virginia, gets into the head of a soldier in Iraq. "A buddy of mine/Stepped on a mine/His body just disappeared/He never returned/ To the hills of Virginia/All they buried were tears," Ferrard sings as the song's melodic shifts between major and minor become a thing of beauty. The protest tradition has many iconic songs, and who's to say that one day Ferrard's Hills Of Virginia won't be mentioned in the same breath as Eric Bogle's And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.