Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker
Album: Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour
Label: Folkroom
Tracks: 13
Website: http://www.josienneclarke.co.uk

You don't have to have been a fan of Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker for very long to realise that they are a duo that constantly evolve, just any two releases in fact. Sure there is a DNA that runs through the whole arc of their material, but there is not one album that you could describe in the same breath as its precursor, well certainly not in its entirety.

There is a feeling that "Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour" is the album that they were always destined to make, an honest to goodness chamber folk album that would feel equally at home in the grandest of mansions as it would in the working class theatres. It's easy to forget that in the day the only differentiation was the venue in which the music was performed and the clothes worn to perform it.

To use another analogy, Vauxhaul Pleasure Gardens, a park that was free to all and whilst the rich may have had Rococo pavilions and food the poor occasionally and literally of some occasions killed for, the music and entertainment were free, something that transcended all. The music reached out to everyone and everyone was moved by it because it was universal in its appeal.

Universal in its appeal is the phrase that most easily quantifies "Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour", for a start it feels timeless, because it incorporates the past in its genetic makeup, it protects its self from the future, I confidently predict that this is an album that won't date, because it is already timeless.

The production and arrangement of the album is of the highest order, as are the cast of musicians that provide the orchestration and yet still Josienne's magnificent voice still manages to set it's self above it, to remain the defining force that links the album to its older brothers and sisters.

The real point about, "Nothing Can Bring Back The Hour", is why would you want to, when you can experience it again and again ad explore it in so many different ways. Quite simply Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker have delivered an album that works as a whole, as a collection of songs or simply as a charge to you emotions and one that should feel at home in any company

Neil King