Various Artists
Album: Sportsmen, Seafarers, Scumbags & Psychos - Songs And Tunes From The Leigh Folk Festival 2013
Label: Thames Delta
Tracks: 22
Website: http://www.leighfolkfestival.co.uk

This year's fundraiser-cum-flagwaver for the long-established Leigh Folk Festival continues the trend set by its predecessors in presenting, on a similarly generously filled disc, a diverse selection of performances of traditional and contemporary songs that brilliantly mirror the eclectic nature of the festival programme while paying deliberate homage to Harry Smith's iconic and hugely influential Anthology Of American Folk Music (which provided so much key inspiration to folk revivalists across both sides of the Atlantic), taking pride in playing fast and loose with any scholarly or received definition of "folk music". And once again, one of the selling points of the disc is the uniquely creative and highly thoughtful way in which the music has been sequenced to work as an entirely satisfying continuous piece. This year, the nature of Leigh-on-Sea as a coastal community is additionally reflected in the recurring maritime theme of much of the collection (it's bookended by snatches of the shanty Hangin' Jonny, and this disc's title reflects both the songs' subject matter and some of the unsavoury characters which populate them.

The mix of artists represented once again serves as a sampler and taster for the broad cross-section of music espoused by the festival, with fairly high-profile names within the folk arena interleaved with little-known artists. Alasdair Roberts contributes a rendition of Jamie Foyers, while Essex stalwarts Lucky Strikes turn in a rollicking version of the ballad Two Sisters; Jason Steel covers a Washington Phillips number O Leave It There (very much in the Harry Smith spirit), and the seriously-upcoming Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker bring to the table a magnificently chilling rendition of The Outlandish Knight. This latter track works especially well alongside You Are Wolf's eerie electronica-riddled take on All Things Are Quite Silent.

Other highlights of the collection occur on the ballads too, notably Tim Burgess' honest account of Butcher Boy, Hladowski & Joynes' excellent Died For Love, and Jo Lepine's stirring version of the ballad of The Selkie O' Sule Skerry, which also features Phil Martin's vocal and hurdy gurdy; Phil then appears in his own right, under the name of Drohne, from whose long-deleted 1993 album comes an intriguing amalgam of the Nico/VU classic All Tomorrow's Parties with a Schottische. Kirsty Cotter and Barry Watson turn in a fitting pairing of the Niel Gow air The Fallen Hero with a march which William Marshall composed in dedication to Gow, and the enigmatic Sproatly Smith are represented by their weird invocation Christ Made A Trance.

Fully three-quarters of the disc's 20 musical adventures (the remaining two tracks being interludes of Sonic Detritus including an excerpt from a local mummers' play) come in previously unreleased recordings; while none of those sourced from former or current CD releases can be said to have had anything like wide circulation, the majority having enjoyed only limited-edition status, so this year's disc scores high for rarity and collectors' value in addition to the specific selling points outlined above, especially considering its fantastically modest asking price of a mere fiver. Snap it up, whether you're going to manage to get to the festival or not!

David Kidman