Cath & Phil Tyler
Album: The Song-Crowned King
Label: Ferric Mordant
Tracks: 6
Website: http://www.cathandphiltyler.bandcamp.com

Having long admired the percipience and talents of this Tyneside-based partnership, any new musical exploits will be of considerable interest to me, and their latest release, a six-track 21-minute EP, proves another keeper. The intimacy of the musical experience is a key feature, whether in close-up backporch old-time mode delivering an archetypal homily (Isaac Watts' Broad Is The Road That Leads To Death) or in raw, unfettered virtuosity on an arcane fiddle tune (Boys The Buzzards Are Flying) or infectiously pointed solo banjo excursion (Puncheon Camps).

The primitive charm of Cath and Phil's performances extends to a glowing country-waltz treatment of the Child ballad Bonnie George Campbell, which contrasts well with the altogether more acerbically sung Old Lady (this one gets a jittery, slightly freaky, part-electrified shifting backdrop that recalls Cath's earlier band Cordelia's Dad) and (possibly my favourite track here) the hymnal Fathers Now Our Meeting Is Over (which may well have come from the annals of Sacred Harp). Musically compelling in its own special way, this EP also comes in an attractive hand-crafted cardboard sleeve.

David Kidman