The austere and shadowy eloquence of the incomparable folk singer June Tabor has sometimes been escorted by Loose Tubes saxophonist Iain Ballamy alongside Tabor’s regular jazz-piano partner Huw Warren, and as the trio Quercus they were deservedly cheered for their eponymously named 2013 debut on ECM. This fine successor similarly mixes traditional English folk songs (The Manchester Angel, Once I Loved You Dear (The Irish Girl), The Cuckoo) with reappraisals of some timeless mainstream favourites. Warren sketches a jazz-ballad accompaniment around Tabor’s rich low tones and wistful upturns on Auld Lang Syne, and both the singer’s long sounds and Ballamy’s haunting tenor sax echo the cries of seabirds on the shipwreck song On Berrow Sands. The Cuckoo mixes a playful bounce with darker implications of infidelity, and a slowly rocking Don’t Think Twice sounds as immediate as if Tabor had just thought of it – with a gentle venom – “You just kind of wasted my precious time.” Another Quercus set with not a sound out of place, but a wealth of quiet surprises just the same.
