A Problem of Our Kind

Three-time nominees at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, Katriona Gilmore (fiddle, mandolin) and Jamie Roberts (guitar) are an impressive duo. Comparisons with that other folk twosome, Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman, are a little inevitable, given the family connection: Jamie is Kathryn Roberts' brother while Sean is the brother of Seth Lakeman. Gilmore demonstrates some of the urgency of Seth's fiddle style on opening track ‘Gauntlet’ but, on the whole, Gilmore & Roberts' approach is more restrained and gentle.

This, their fifth studio album, alternates Gilmore's contrasting compositions with Roberts'. The cleverly punning ‘Just a Piece of Wood’ is Roberts' affectionate homage to her instrument. Listening to the words, we imagine she is addressing a lover in the song, until the chorus: ‘I wish you could explain every mark and every grain/Whose hands caressed your neck before I could.’ The centrepiece of the collection, ‘On the Line’, is a reflection on the public's reactions to a suicide on the railway tracks, and what this tells us about our society. This song's lyric also gives the album its title: ‘And it goes much further than this station, it's a problem of our kind/But a change must come somewhere down the line.’