Overnight

The award-winning duo's first album for Rough Trade is their finest work to date, and certainly among the best folk or acoustic albums of the year, mixing folk, country, jazz and 60s pop in a set that includes a superb cover of Gillian Welch's ‘Dark Turn of Mind’ and Purcell's 16th-century ballad, ‘Weep You No More, Sad Fountains’, alongside powerful new originals, all carried aloft by Clarke's remarkable voice and lyrics and Walker's superb arrangements and musicianship.

Night, moonlight and first light feature on standout songs such as ‘The Waning Crescent’, ‘The Light of His Lamp’, the title-track and the closing ‘Light of the Day’ – all strong pieces, with not an ounce of extraneous matter. ‘Sleep’ sets an Ivor Gurney poem to powerful effect, while the opening ‘Nine Times Along’ is lyrical and elegiac. The band of supporting players encompasses strings, horns, piano, double-bass and drums, and musical forms range from the spectral folk of ‘Dawn of the Dark’ to the 60s space-race-era pop of ‘The Waning Crescent’. In Clarke's lyrics there's darkness, passion, melancholia, yearning and solace. Intimate and intense, and fused with Walker's music, these songs are hard to beat.