Spiro: Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow

Spiro is a strange, indefinable, delightful band of merry musicians which have developed a style so spare, so unaffected, and so melodic that you'd swear you'd heard all the tunes before. Drawing on classical music, folk traditions of Britain, Spiro is unlike anything else on record. Its music may be rooted in the sounds of English folk traditions, but its music is more than that as it brims with modern ideas. Adventurous and open minded, the band is thoroughly a 21st century band which has left behind categories and labels in pursuit of music that speaks to them most deeply.

Just like on their previous records, the music on Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow continues to be a risky musical adventure. The album is replete with Spiro's virtues. What is most fascinating about this music is how all of them fit together.All of the band members are masters who are not averse to displaying their brilliance, but the star of the show is the music they create. All of the elements are skillfully combined and the result is something that at the same time is both traditional and adventurously novel. On each track, Spiro demonstrates its intimate communication skills, melodic finesse, a finely-honed mastery of style and elegance. All of these 14 tracks are treated with dazzling virtuosity, tenderness and humor. Somehow the band members seem to land together with a mysterious precision.

Some of the tracks are based on existing folk tunes, but these melodies serve as stepping stones as they are fully absorbed, disseminated and reinvented. Combined with the original compositions it adds up to a unique mixture.

Welcome Joy or Welcome Sorrow is an album of hidden surprises with intricate patterns that interweave with a certain inevitability and yet elusiveness, so that at the end one can't quite grasp the melodies that mesh together. The constant questing melodic exploration at moments resembles a river with some really strange currents. This is thoughtful and intriguing work.