Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

This is an album of some of the cream of contemporary folk, so it hardly needs me to tell you that it's excellent – but I'm going to say it anyway.  This really is a cracking compilation.

There is a wide range of talent here, with veteran colossi like Richard Thompson and Joan Armatrading, a later generation of now-established greatness like Eliza Carthy and The Unthanks and a great variety of people who were not so well known to me but with whom I'm very glad to be better acquainted.  Whoever is playing and singing here, the standard of musicianship is consistently excellent and it really is a delight for an old folkie to hear the magnificent music being produced by folk musicians at the moment.

Folk has always been a diverse field; that's true here so there will doubtless be some tracks which you prefer to others, but the whole thing is quite remarkably good.  Just as an example, it's fascinating to hear the contrast between the brilliant, quite traditional playing of Richmond Cotillon from the wonderful Murmurs album and the modern, jazzy take on folk dances by Ross Ainslie on Skins.

This is an album which has made me listen again to the people whose music I already know and made me search out several others.  No one with any interest in folk music could possibly be disappointed in this, and I can recommend it very warmly indeed.  It's terrific.