5/5
Review:
A lovely album
This is a very, very good album. The material is generally excellent and the musicianship is just wonderful.
These three are all superb musicians and they give the whole album a terrific feel. The rapport between them is plain and the sound they produce together is quite spellbinding, I think - and beautifully recorded, so this it's rich and very satisfying. The sheer precision and technical skill on the instrumentals Richmond Cotillon and Lads Of Alnwick is breathtaking, for example, but what you hear is just lovely, joyous truly dancing music.
The material and arrangements are good and varied - the opening of Plains Of Waterloo has the air of a dreamy Pink Floyd track about it, for example - so the familiar and new blend well. The vocal work is good, if not outstanding, but the overall effect is always very pleasing. I have to say that some of the lyrics of the new compositions here aren't the best you'll ever hear. Although I'm absolutely in sympathy with what they are saying about fracking, the killing of wild birds and so on, they are a bit clunky and crude in places.
Nonetheless, this is a lovely album of very fine music played by three giants of the folk scene. It does this old folkie's heart good to know that, four decades and more after I first started sitting in smoke-filled folk clubs and dancing the Morris, English folk music is in such a large number of excellent hands. These are three pairs of such hands, and they've made a terrific record. Very warmly recommended.
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