songdreaming

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the face of technological advance, we have seen an equal and opposite surge in communion with the natural world. This revival has certain figureheads, among them English folk song renaissance man, Sam Lee.

He returns with his first studio album in four years, following 2020’s Old Wow, and the man behind London’s Nest Collective and the Singing with Nightingales country walking and music phenomenon once more delivers a manifesto for harmony with our environment. Produced by Bernard Butler and with ‘long-time collaborator James Keay,’ birdsong is never far from the fore, field recordings rippling into view on the opener.

The textures of nature are echoed in a varied array of instruments from violin and guitar to qanun, nyckelharpa and the small pipes. There’s also gospel from Trans Voices, a London transgender choir. Lee is never one to sit still. This album finds him once more sailing halfway between the dark soil of the real countryside and a swirling dreamscape of myth and legend, with music and song that is arch, unashamedly particular and highly distinctive. A folk voice for the England of the 21st century.