Anchor

Norma Waterson and her daughter Eliza Carthy have sung together ever since Eliza first grasped language. Perhaps that is one reason why Anchor ends with ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’. But they have made only one previous album, Gift, in 2010. After this Norma fell seriously ill. She has gradually recovered, but performances by this wonderful singer are now few and far between. It is, therefore, a joy and a relief to hear Norma's voice again, melding with Eliza's.

Both singers have always had a great ear for a song and their material here ranges way beyond the traditional canon they are associated with. The album opens with ‘Strange Weather’ by Tom Waits, wanders into Peter Bellamy's setting of Rudyard Kipling's dirge ‘The Widow's Party’, and then on to the spiky jazz of Kurt Weill's ‘Lost in the Stars’. They brilliantly capture the spirit of Eric Idle's ‘The Galaxy Song’ – a reminder of our cosmic insignificance – and complete a circular paying of homage by singing ‘Shanty of the Whale’, which KT Tunstall wrote inspired by the singing of The Watersons. There is a rough scrape to Eliza's fiddle playing and the Gift Band provide a sometimes eerie accompaniment. Some of the songs are melancholy, but there is joy in the performance of them. Norma's voice has altered, as has Eliza's. There is a sense of having lived and arrived at this point in time, anchored by a lifetime's singing together.