For one breed of folknik the preservation of a song’s air of antiquity is a sacred duty. This London band take the contrary approach, gleefully (at times brutally) wrenching the ancient canon into modern times. They do so not by going “folk rock” but via raw minimalism, setting Nicola Kearey’s cockney vocals to accompaniments of dobro and guitar, with strands of fiddle and flute and the odd storm of handclaps. The wheedling estuary vowels can get over-stretched (“What care I fer me goose fevver bed?” as Seven Gypsies has it) but there’s joy and mournfulness in originals like Me n Becky and By of River while standards like Hard Times of Old England and Bows of London emerge urgent and tragic. A triumph.
