The Seeds Inside (The Grapes Upon The Vine)

Drawing on old-time Americana and country as well as soaking up influences of traditional English folk music, this South London alt-folk collective formed in 2009 around husband and wife Rupert Browne (guitar, bass, vocals) and Ruth Jacob (vocals, banjo, harmonica, tin whistle), who also run Tooting Folk club, with Will Dobson on percussion and Boris Ming on fiddle and vocals. They already have two EPs and a full-length album Escape from Clinch Mountain to their name but this enticing collection is the most coherent realisation of their intent to ‘reflect traditions within music, how the old is contained inside the new and the new existed within the old.’ Standout track ‘Plimsoll’ is their folk-rock arrangement of a broadside ballad in praise of Samuel Plimsoll and his 19th-century campaign for better safety on so-called ‘coffin ships’, where owners were sending sailors off to their deaths to cash in on insurance, while the traditional-sounding ‘All Look the Same’ is actually penned by Jacob and Browne, inspired by the camps at Calais. The sea shanty-derived music-hall favourite ‘All For Me Grog’, as revived by The Dubliners, The Clancy Brothers, Jon Boden and many others, closes proceedings in irresistibly jaunty style.