Gog Magog

After four years, The Trials of Cato are back with a second album that’s even better than their award-winning debut. There has been a change of line-up while they have been away, with Polly Bolton (vocals, mandolin, bouzouki and banjo) now joining Robin Jones (vocals, banjo, bouzouki) and Tomos Williams (guitars, bass, keys, percussion), who first started playing together when they were teaching in Beirut. As a result, there’s even greater range to the trio’s eclectic mix, but they still match complex, subtle playing against bursts of stomping rhythms.

The Trials of Cato concentrate on self-written songs and instrumentals, often influenced by folk stories, rather than re-working traditional material, and their often edgy vocals are backed by a constantly-changing backdrop that can involve sturdy, stirring banjos, or drifting mandolin. There are stories about the supernatural (‘When Black Shuck Roams’), a modern-day plague tale (‘Ring of Roses’), and unsettling personal stories. ‘I Thought You Were My Friend’ ebbs and flows like a pained conversation. Then there’s a suitably crazed treatment of the traditional ‘Bedlam Boys’ (starting with a distorted snatch of Steeleye Span’s excellent 1971 version), and fine a cappella singing (in Welsh) at the start of ‘Aberdaron’. Gog Magog is a classy, highly original set.