On Clay Hill

This is a family album. On the face of it, it's a stripped-back, purist collection of traditional English folk songs, almost entirely delivered a capella. That might sound rather austere, but not a bit of it. Harmony singer Fran Foote is a member of English folk band Stick in the Wheel and hails from Basildon in Essex. This is the first time she's recorded with her mother, Belinda Kempster. The familial warmth is immediately evident, but the real spark for this collection is Foote's great uncle Ernie Austin, who was recorded by Topic Records in 1974; he shared classics, from ‘John Barleycorn’ and ‘The Blue Cockade’ to ‘Bushes and Briars’. A parade of handsome farmhands and soldiers are lamented and swooned over by young maids, never more so than on Kempster's fine solo rendition of ‘Bonny Labouring Boy’ – complete with intimate giggles and asides at the end.

This easy energy gives the album its charm. But for a drone behind certain tracks, it's simply two voices as if round the kitchen table, and you can smell the sweet June wildflowers on the air in ‘The Sheep-Shearing Song’ and the stale tang of beer in the public bar in ‘Little Bugger’, Austin's take on ‘The Crayfish’, which he, charmingly, never liked to sing in ‘mixed company.’ There's even a little music hall turn from Austin himself at the end.