Rakes and Misfits

Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne plays melodeons and concertinas, including a rare Lachenal 30-key bass Anglo concertina on which he performs ‘parping accompaniment to silly songs.’ It makes a wonderful noise, used to great effect in ‘The Dancing Tailor’. He plays with gusto, his rhythmic bass accompaniment particularly enjoyable. With delicacy, too, for instance during his beautifully ornamented concertina version of the tune ‘Worcester Farewell’. Young, confident, Braithwaite-Kilcoyne sings in a forthright, take it or leave it manner that anyone familiar with the work of Peter Bellamy will recognise. I’ll take it, thank you.

Rakes and Misfits isn’t a live album, but it could be. Braithwaite-Kilcoyne performs songs, mostly traditional, but a few of his own, and tunes, and records them in the studio without any overdubs or other intervention. Braithwaite-Kilcoyne’s focus here is on outsiders; he sings with relish the stories of the pirate in ‘New Barbary’, the street robber in ‘The Jolly Highwayman’, someone who makes teasingly impossible demands of a would-be lover in ‘Strawberry Lane’, that cross-dressing terpsichorean tailor and a serial absconder in ‘The New Deserter’. Rakes and Misfits is a joyful celebration of and salute to people who refuse to conform.