The Somerset Sessions

Lakeman sings and plays several instruments but his great gift, drawing on the folk tradition, is for narrative. The Somerset Sessions opens with ‘The Giant’, the story of how individuals drawn to a whale stranded on a Devon beach come together and manage to return it to open water.

This is, though, a rare moment of joy: the parlous state of the world weighs heavily on Lakeman. In ‘When I’m Gone’ a farm labourer contemplates his life working the land; ‘Yet I never owned a blade of grass.’ The only plot that will ever belong to him will be his grave. What gives the song depth is detail. The man he worked for for years has died; his heir is without empathy –‘His eyes are cold, manner blunt.’ ‘Underground’ also dramatizes the plight of the worker once ‘the money men have had their say’ and the industrial becomes post-industrial. And ‘Hollow’ is an apocalyptic litany.

Lakeman's singing is appropriately anguished; yet The Somerset Sessions, with John Smith's lyrical electric guitar, the driving drumming of Ethan Johns and Nick Pini's come-along-now bass, is an album, in spite of it all, of catchy melodies and memorable hooks.