Find the Lady

Pauls Sartin and Hutchinson have worked as a duo for 15 years, burrowing into the sheet music and songbooks of the English folk tradition to unearth long-forgotten gems, while setting more familiar fare to lesser-known tunes. Theirs is a living musical archaeology, and Find the Lady, their eighth album in 15 years, finds them on excellent form, mixing wit, sentiment, passion, humour and great musicianship on a set drawn across several centuries of song. Sartin and Hutchinson are a brilliant live double act, with a sense of comedic and musical timing honed over years of gigging. Sartin also resides in the house of Bellowhead, while Hutchinson can also often be found minding his own band, Hoover the Dog. For Find the Lady, they've augmented their sound with Jackie Oates’ harmony vocals and violin, Jim Moray's guitar and typically brilliant, clear production, and fellow Bellowheader Pete Flood's percussion.

It's a rich and gamey sound palette of oboe, accordion, violin, viola, percussion and guitar. Tunes such as ‘Lull Me Beyond Thee’ from the first edition of Playford's Dancing Master sound as deeply textured as gnarled oaks, while ‘Thresherman’ – the tune and sentiments adapted from the peerless Copper Family songbook – shows that they choose their songs with care and exercise them with pleasure. This multiple-course feast has a tactile and gloss-free feel, and songs such as the lovely ‘Turtle Dove’ from Dorset, make you feel you're part of an intimate, twilight chamber performance in a Jacobean time warp. It's art music, but with its feet in the clay of the folk tradition.