Time Was Away

Portman and Harbron are, in their different ways, leading lights of contemporary English folk – Portman as a singer, songwriter and interpreter of mythic balladry, both as a solo artist and member of the mighty Furrow Collective, and Harbron as master of the English concertina, renowned for his work with Leveret, the Remnant Kings, The Full English and more. Here, they occupy the edgelands of traditional song, augmented by two poems, including Louis MacNeice’s ‘Meeting Point’, a poem of a relationship written under the shadow of approaching world war, and from which the album’s title, Time Was Away, is taken.

Portman is renowned for her immersion in the myth and fairytale attached to folk traditions, but here the songs are more at the social end of the spectrum – songs concerning inequality such as the opening ‘The Healths’, while ‘Borstal Boy’ and ‘The Oakham Poachers’ follow themes that are more timely and contemporary than timeless wonders – while ‘Down in the Meadow’ comes with a field recording of diggers uprooting Portman’s local stretch of green, fusing past and present in one delicately balanced musical tense. Portman’s vocals work beautifully with Harbron’s concertina, augmented by touches of banjo and mandolin, piano and Pete Judge’s flugelhorn.