Full Circle (Barbara Dickson album)

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Full Circle
Full Circle - Baby Dickson.jpg
Studio album by Barbara Dickson
Released 20 September 2004
Recorded 2004
Genre Folk, Pop, MOR
Length47:43
Label R and M Records
Producer Troy Donockley
Barbara Dickson chronology
For the Record
(2002)
Full Circle
(2004)
Nothing's Gonna Change My World
(2006)

Full Circle is an album by Barbara Dickson, released in 2004. As the title suggests, the album saw Dickson returning to her first love - folk music. It also marked the beginning of her musical partnership with Troy Donockley who arranged and produced the album. The album was critically well-received - The Daily Telegraph wrote:

Barbara Ruth Dickson is a Scottish singer whose hits include "I Know Him So Well", "Answer Me" and "January February". Dickson has placed fifteen albums in the UK Albums Chart from 1977 to date, and had a number of hit singles, including four which reached the Top 20 in the UK Singles Chart. The Scotsman newspaper has described her as Scotland's best-selling female singer in terms of the numbers of hit chart singles and albums she has achieved in the UK since 1976.

<i>The Daily Telegraph</i> British daily broadsheet newspaper

The Daily Telegraph, commonly referred to simply as The Telegraph, is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was founded by Arthur B. Sleigh in 1855 as Daily Telegraph & Courier.

Contents

Sifting through one of her father's old shirt boxes, where she habitually stored bits of paper with the words of songs she picked up while touring the folk clubs of the British Isles as a young woman, Barbara Dickson found the material for this return to her pre-Blood Brothers, pre-Band Of Gold roots.

It is no exaggeration to describe Dickson as a great singer. She stood out a mile among the Scottish folk singers of her generation, and she has consistently shown her class when performing for a wider public.

From the first notes of 'Garton Mother's Lullaby' to the last strains of 'Eriskay Love Song', Full Circle maintains those fine standards. Dickson takes each ballad in her stride, ably produced by Troy Donockley, who also contributes moody uillean pipes. The content is predominantly traditional, though the Everly Brothers' 'Living Too Close To The Ground' is a surprising exception, and it is easy to see why these songs, melodically strong and lyrically rich, caught Dickson's attention years ago. Without dismissing the work she has done in the other three decades of her career, this is Dickson at her most engaging.

Track listing

No.TitleMusicLength
1."Garten Mother's Lullaby"Traditional3:37
2."The Sky Above the Roof" Ralph Vaughan Williams 2:21
3."Across the Hills" Leon Rosselson 3:08
4."The Unquiet Grave"Traditional5:26
5."Faithless Love" J. D. Souther 5:26
6."Westron Wynde"Traditional0:34
7."Corpus Christi Carol"Traditional4:42
8."Living Too Close to the Ground" The Everly Brothers 4:41
9."Singing Bird"Traditional6:31
10."When I Am Laid to Earth (Dido's Lament)" Henry Purcell 4:00
11."Eriskay Love Song"Traditional7:14

Personnel

Danny Thompson English bassist

Daniel Henry Edward Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist. He has had a long musical career playing with a large variety of other musicians, particularly Richard Thompson and John Martyn.

Troy Donockley English composer and multi-instrumentalist

Troy Donockley is an English composer and multi-instrumentalist most known for his playing of Uilleann pipes. Having performed with many artists as a session player, he is most notable as a member of Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish, which he has performed with since 2007 and joined as a full-time member in 2013.

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References

AllMusic Online music database

AllMusic is an online music database. It catalogs more than 3 million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musical artists and bands. It launched in 1991, predating the World Wide Web.