Title: Stick to your roots
Product review: Mick Moloney told me a few years ago that if it were up to him, all the Johnstons recordings would be buried forever, like nuclear waste. I don't know if he was thinking of any in particular, and if he was including the traditional albums (likeThe Johnstons and The Barleycorn) then I totally disagree; but when it comes to the modern songs, I sympathise.It's not that the performances here are incompetent, but (with one exception) they just don't come off, as far as I'm concerned: they're not folk music, they're not folk-rock, the lyrics sound contrived, they just exist in some sort of limbo.The exception is Ian Campbell's "The Old Man's Song", which gets a driving interpretation punctuated by the slip jig "The Kid on the Mountain" in the middle. An extra star for that.
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