Rating: 5/5
Review:
A gem
I think this is an excellent album from Martha Tilston. I like her previous two albums (Machines Of Love And Grace and Lucy And The Wolves) very much, which consisted largely of her own songs. Here she has recorded an album of mainly traditional English songs, largely reflecting her family's strong musical traditions and involving her family and friends in the performances. The result is beautiful and haunting, I think.
Those of us who cut our folkie teeth in the late 60s and early 70s, will know songs like Lovely On The Water, Blackwater Side, Lowlands of Holland and so on very well, familiar from folk clubs and albums by Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Fairport and others. These are fine, fresh versions, though. Martha Tilston has a lovely voice for this material and she's an excellent guitarist - with more than a hint of her childhood family friend Bert Jansch in several places. Her fellow musicians are uniformly excellent, and even her uncle Kevin Whatley - an unlikely name on a folk album - shows he's a very competent singer here. The arrangements are very good, giving real atmosphere and meaning to each song and the whole album is a high class treat, in my view.
Martha Tilston is one of a good number of very fine, young-ish folk musicians performing now, and it is good to know that English folk music is in such excellent hands at the moment. If you have any interest in folk music, or just like a well-made album of lovely songs I can recommend this very warmly. It's a little gem.
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