All Seven Stars

This folk quartet known as Long Lankin comprises former Medieval Baebe Tanya Jackson, Shetland fiddler Marion Gray, London-Irish player Caroline Regan and London Bulgarian Choir member Polly Hunt. Their debut album opens with an ancient fragment of Old Norse recovered from Shetland, the ‘Unst Boat Song’, sung in sharp and clear harmonies with a minimal guitar-percussion backdrop. Further innovative adventures in the tradition come with highly listenable accounts of ‘Bonnie Ship the Diamond’, drawn up from the sea's haul of whaling songs, the stirring group harmonies of ‘Here's the Tender Coming’ and there's some fine traditional tunes from Sweden and Ireland, Robert Burns’ ‘Westlin Winds’ and a West Indian shanty set beside the traditional Scots song ‘Bonnie Lass O’Fyvie’.

Of the original songs, Tanya Jackson's ‘Poacher’ re-tools Sleeping Beauty so the young girl stays asleep, and Marion Gray's ‘Royl Field Hill’ pieces together childhood adventures and fragmentary history. The record has a clear, uncluttered production and a strong live feel, and from song to song the musical settings are full of contrasts. All Seven Stars more than fulfils the promise of their earlier five-track EP, In the Moss.