Unquenching Fire

As soon as you see the names Miranda Sykes and Hannah Martin together you’re excited. They have two of the finest voices on the contemporary English folk scene. Their new project provides a platform for seeing what those two voices can do together. The results are worth hearing.

Sykes is best known as the essential third element in the long-running folk duo Show of Hands, bringing double bass and her crystal clear vocals to complement the more gravelled tones of Steve Knightley and Phil Beer. Martin is one half of Edgelarks with her partner, Phillip Henry, a multi-instrumentalist and producer whose fingerprints are all over this debut. Both musicians radiate an unquenching love of lesser-known finds from the archives, including the title-track. Yet the title-track is also a fine example of how they take tradition and evolve it with looped refrains and striking instrumentation (particularly Sykes' double bass). The dark tones of the bass, mixed with the resonance of the lower notes in Martin's rich cadence, bring out a disquiet found in so many of these old folk songs of loss, war and regret. With the final a cappella haunting of ‘Little Margaret’, the album ends abruptly and devastatingly, like a sudden loss. This is elemental modern folk song.