Music Reviews

Nayland – A Cuckoo Crying

“This album is full of well crafted songs that take a lifetime of experience about specific places, people and events and transmute those experiences into something universal. They trigger feelings, and sometimes memories, that belong to each of us as individuals and this album lets us know that we are not alone in our experiences. These songs are about an English way of life which, if you believe the modern communications media, has long disappeared.”

“Chris proves through the use of song, one of humankind’s oldest means of communication, that these lives do not belong in the dusty attic of the past. The life of Gertrude Sod ‘Em All is still relevant today and there are people in the rural environment of England still living lives that revolve around God, the seasons and Nature, listen to The Fire bicycle if you doubt it. This is not an album about the past, it is about the present and makes us take thought for the future.”

Mark Surridge (Castle Folk)

Between Suffolk Pink and Essex Blue

“Following on from his first album “Nayland – A Cuckoo Crying”, this latest collection of songs by Chris Pitts sneaks up on you. He weaves a tapestry of music that evokes the spirit of places from rural England. Not a romantic past, but an urgent present with its moods and characters filling the spaces in his art.”

“His collaboration with with a close and dear friend on the song “Virginia the Carnival Queen” is itself a part of this landscape, and is as much part of the picture as the moods and emotions it stirs in the conscious mind.”

“This album is not to be taken lightly. The places and characters are real – not the fantastic inventions of imagination. I know this to be true because I have seen these places and met the people. Now you can too!”

Mark Surridge (Castle Folk)

“Chris’s musical language. although rooted in the traditions of the 1960′ s and 70’s, and with more than a nodding acquaintance to Bob Dylan, is often unique and surprising.”

“Gathering inspiration from not only the people and places of his native Suffolk, he looks widely not only to Dylan but also to music of the great masters such as Mozart and Vaughan-Williams. Long associations with several fine instrumentalist such as Chris Gibson (violin) who unashamedly blows his own trumpet in this little critique, and Rory Duncan (keyboard), both of whom can be heard on this album, have enabled Chris to experiment widely with musical textures that fit the uniqueness of his songs, from the sad and serious to the just plain daft!”

Chris Gibson (Cavendish Consort)