Gracious Wings

Since her eponymous debut, released in 2006, through the stellar likes of Hyperboreans, Saturnine and Lullabies, Jackie Oates has proved to be among English folk’s finest female singers – a field full of great and original talents. Sometimes, I think she’s the finest of all. Listen to a song she wrote during lockdown, ‘Robin Tells of Winter’, the second track on this fabulous album, and see what you think. The fiddle tune to follow that, ‘Gracious Wings’, highlights her dexterity, too, as an instrumentalist with a big emotional range. She plays on the heart strings, which are pulled and tightened across many a song here.

There’s a sweetness and a melancholy to her voice that is like no other, and for which there is no known formula with which to replicate it. She’ll not shy from sentiment, either, as on the children’s song ‘Tammy Toddles’, and at the same time she can take up Tom Waits’ classic from Raindogs, ‘Time’ and wring out its melancholy and searing sense of experience. A ballad like ‘The Ship in Distress’ is a natural habitat for her, too, enclosed by Mike Cosgrave’s guitar and John Parker’s double bass, and there’s John Spiers to hand, who joins her on vocals for a Basque song, ‘Iruten Ari Nuzu’ (I am Making Wool).