Death and Other Animals

Messrs Rose, Sartin and Kirkpatrick are three crack players whose music has been heard far and wide – whether in the flash company of Bellowhead, Belshazzar's Feast, or Waterson:Carthy, not to forget various solo and duo formations. As Faustus, they are purveyors of instrumental finesse, with the kind of arrangements that don’t just wake up in the morning and yawn themselves into being. Driven by Kirkpatrick's brilliant guitar, with Rose's melodeon and Sartin's oboe and violin adding all sorts of colours to the palette, all three trade lead vocals through the 11 tracks here. There are some brilliant performances of great and obscure traditional songs and tunes, drawing on tales of sand-swallowed ships, the grim spectre of death and the travails of the common man. Researched and recorded during the trio's residency at the National Centre for the Folk Arts at Halsway Manor in the Quantocks, the set includes four songs from the archive of Somerset folklorist Ruth Tongue – ‘The Deadly Sands’, about wrecks around Minehead, ‘The Death of the Hart Royal’, suffused with the ancient Greenwood myth, and the danse macabre of ‘Death Goes A-Walking’ among them. Four years on from the great Broken Down Gentlemen, Faustus are at their best here.