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You'll get it cheaper at Duck Soup’s Gramophone and Cycle Stores, 18 Station Road, West Croydon.’ So proclaims the sign on the sepia-toned cover of the second album by Duck Soup, a three-piece band playing old time English ballads and French-Canadian tunes on such exotic instruments as the marimba and the phonofiddle. The name Duck Soup conjures up images from the Marx Brothers movie: the three-piece have the same wry, tongue-in-cheek sense of humour on this album. At the same time, there is a genuine reverence for the music they play. The backbone of this disc is the music of Alfred Montmarquette, a New York-born melodeon player who moved to Montreal in the 1920s and notated a stream of French-Canadian waltzes, polkas and marches.

These instrumentals are interspersed with English folk songs learnt from the grand old couple of folk, Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson. Particularly beautiful in its raw, spit’n’sawdust delivery is ‘The False Lover Won Back’, an Aberdeenshire folk song. All the traditional songs and tunes are rearranged and brought to life by Dan Quinn, who recreates Montmarquette’s melodeon sound, Ian Kearey on the 12-string Dobro guitar, mandolin, piano and bass, and Adam Bushell, who branches out with the marimba, phonofiddle (a violin with a gramophone-style horn) and musical saw. The pleasure of this album lies in the uncompromising adherence to a traditional sound, notwithstanding the quirky instrumentation. This is music to transport the listener to a slower, more charming place. It is gentle, honest and easy on the ear.