Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop are so clearly made for each other that they should consider making this professional pairing permanent. The former, who trades as the folk-lounge-Americana outfit Iron and Wine, and the eclectic Californian songwriter Hoop are like a pair of unrelated siblings: their delicate golden harmonies are as instinctive as their genial bickering. Visually, they’re also cut from the same rawboned cloth, he bearded and brimstoneish, she full-skirted and ramrod-spined. Their collaborative album, Love Letter for Fire, played almost in full here, harvests the best of both.
Notwithstanding their individual dabblings in hip-hop and funk, as a duo they gravitate to backwoods folk with country accents. Both play guitar, with Hoop the more adventurous player as Beam chunks out the rhythms. From the opening Kiss Me Quick, their vocals puddle mellifluously, often reducing lyrics to a blur. Ironically, it’s hard to discern a word these exceptionally wordy writers are singing. No matter. The autumnal flow of We Two Are a Moon – the first song they wrote as a team – sounds like a more authentic Civil Wars, while solo songs such as Iron and Wine’s Resurrection Fern and Hoop’s Hunting My Dress entice an unexpected earthiness out of Hoop and silvery delicacy from Beam.
If anything is lacking, it’s drama: the set ambles along at the same gentle pace throughout, broken only by a wonderfully odd cover of the Parton/Rogers hit Islands in the Stream. Gummed up and creaking, it’s a welcome palate-cleanser during this four-course soft-folk meal.
•At End of the Road festival, Salisbury, on 3 September, and Moseley folk festival, Birmingham, on 4 September.
