Findings

Ange Hardy and Lukas Drinkwater have been performing as a duo since December 2015 and this album encapsulates what they have created over the past year. Many of their songs were developed during the English Folk Dance & Song Society (EFDSS) Creative Artists Bursary that the duo was awarded in 2016 alongside Steve Pledger, who contributes backing vocals here. They are joined by accordionist Archie Churchill-Moss and fiddler Ciaran Algar.

The overriding sentiment of the material is tenderness. A thread of tales of young children runs through the album, and Hardy even sings to her own daughter, Amy, on the track ‘Daughter Dear Daughter’. ‘By the Tides’ speaks of the child refugees lost on the Mediterranean and the deep, dark ‘True are the Mothers’, sung by Nancy Kerr and Kathryn Roberts. Hardy and Drinkwater are thoughtful musicians and the intertwining of tradition and personal creation runs throughout. Many of the tales focus on Hardy's home county of Somerset. Drinkwater hails from even further west, and there is much of the tough, weather-beaten West Country about their mournful sound.