If You See a Rook on Its Own, It’s a Crow

Lincolnshire-born singer and fiddle player Elle Osborne first hit the folk scene with her 2000 debut Testimony. This was followed 11 long years later by the excellent So Slowly Slowly Got She Up (reviewed in #78), which featured Alasdair Roberts, who is among the guests on her second set of all-original songs after 2015’s It’s Not Your Gold Shall Me Entice. Her distinctive slightly quavering vocals – bearing, still, some of the influence of Peter Bellamy – is supported by her own work on violin and cello, with fine and distinctive guitar work from Roberts and Alice Emerson, while dexterous percussive work from The Trembling Bells’ Alex Neilson and Stephen Hiscock both expand and corral the songs.

Produced by Stereolab’s Joe Watson, pieces such as ‘The Selkie’, drawing on the well-known mythology of Scottish seal folk, have a beguiling and mysterious sound space, the tremolo in Osborne’s voice working especially well on the wordless vocal passages, while album opener ‘Birds of the British Isles’ is utterly charming. A young Lou Reed could be strumming the electric guitar on ‘The Taming of the Shrewd’ (with Moe’s bass drum in the backdrop), as catchy as anything here. Bird-lore, folklore, humanity and experience run through this welcome return to the record.