Shortwinger

In 2012, Maddy Prior got together with singer, accordionist and clog dancer Hannah James (Lady Maisery) and violinist and piper Giles Lewin of Dufay Collective, Bellowhead and Carnival Band, to release the excellent 3 for Joy, with a mix of medieval poetry and industrial balladry. Six years later these three meet again for a deeply mythological set delving into the wild places of English landscape and folklore, with lyrics populated by hares, hawks, starlings, wrens, blackbirds, herons, larks and swallows and curlews.

Cellist Barney Morse Brown guests on ‘The Grey Heron’, while a recorded curlew sings on the album closer, and throughout the combination of James' accordion, Lewin's fiddle and their three voices - especially the numerous resonant duets between Prior and James - makes for an excellent set. Aside from the traditional ‘Jenny Wren’, and settings of poems by Emily Dickinson (‘The Owl’) and Samuel Ferguson (‘The Lark in the Clear Air’, an 18th-century Irish rebel song), Prior provides the words and each member contributes to the striking arrangements. Between them, Prior, James and Lewin deliver a rich and highly distinctive set.