Great ideas do not always make great records. Thankful Villages is a tremendous undertaking: visiting all 54 English and Welsh villages that lost no soldiers in the first world war. Part musical album, part snapshot of rural life, volume 2 hits places such as Flixborough in Lincolnshire, where a factory explosion in 1974 killed everyone inside, but the village outside was spared. The oral histories are riveting. The problem lies in Darren Hayman’s handling of the music. The veteran indie musician cannot ditch his knock-kneed approach, honed over 15 solo albums and four in Hefner. Folk, like rural life, can be red in tooth and claw; Hayman’s pastel jingle-jangles ill serve his rich sources.
