I wol with lusty herte fressh and grene
Seyn yow a song, to glade yow, I wene,
And lat us stynte of ernestful matere.
Herkneth my song, that seith in this manere.
Seyn yow a song, to glade yow, I wene,
And lat us stynte of ernestful matere.
Herkneth my song, that seith in this manere.
(Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales)
I’ve had The Belbury Tales, Jim Jupp’s fourth LP as Belbury
Poly, a good couple of months now. I’ve listened to it more often and
enjoyed it more completely than any other release so far in 2012. It’s
an unusually satisfying record, actually. It just feels so much
like the culmination of something, a kind of apotheosis, a near-perfect
realization, after almost a decade, not just of Jupp’s own project, but
that of his label, Ghost Box, too. And that’s just not something that
happens very often. Hence, the satisfaction. Here’s my problem though:
As endlessly rich and fascinating as this record is, it also feels
totally over-determined from a critical perspective. The cold specter of
Hauntology looms dauntingly large. There’s so much to say, yet so little that’s new...
