This House Will Stand

For this Best Of set, Oysterband have compiled a disc of choice cuts from across their late-90s and post-2000s career, comprising 15 tracks from six albums (including the wonderful Ragged Kingdom with June Tabor). There's also a second disc of 14 unreleased outtakes, demos, live cuts and alternate versions. It's a typically generous collection, catering on the one hand to the broader audience a compilation might attract, while giving long-term fans some unreleased gems.

The set focuses on their maturity as a band, creating big-hearted, big-chorused tunes that embrace the core tradition (such as ‘Blackwaterside’) as well as pop, rock and songs of political intent (‘Here Comes the Flood’). These are big tunes that have the kind of boozy, uplifting spirit of a singalong: they presaged, in many ways, the party atmosphere of Bellowhead. The Oysters have that epic, windswept, shout-it-from-the-rooftops feel you get with some Celtic rock and folk bands, but without the accompanying bombast.

Fans will cherish the second disc, while more casual listeners can get into Oysterband through the front door via the first set, and go out the back via the more informal, experimental second. Theirs is a house of many mansions and it looks set to stand for a long time yet.