Kathryn Roberts & Sean Lakeman
Album: Tomorrow Will Follow Today
Label: IScream Music
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.kathrynrobertsandseanlakeman.com

With parental responsibilities and a shift in folk's musical climate having led to an almost 10 year gap between their second and third albums, the couple have thankfully not left such a gap in following up 2012's critically applauded Hidden People I(and the Best Duo win at the 2013 Radio 2 Folk Awards) with this dynamic and bold return to the fray.

Produced, as you would expect, by Lakeman (whose knob-twiddling CV includes brother Seth, Bellowhead, Frank Turner and Imelda May), save for an appearance by Pete Thomas on accordion for one track, every note here is the duo's own work with the pair also writing eight of the 10 songs, the remaining two being a brace of obscure and rarely recorded traditional numbers.

One of these, Child Owlet, opens proceedings, a particularly gruesome component of the Child Ballads which, driven by Lakeman's percussive guitar and evocative of the early work of Steeleye Span, takes in seduction, incest and betrayal before winding up with the unfortunate young man's murder on the moors and not "a blade of grass or holly bush not covered over with his blood and pieces of his flesh."

The first self-penned song, 52 Hertz, focuses on the couple's fascination with and love of whales, a slow swaying piano and guitar number that spotlights Roberts' heartfelt vocals as the lyric employs the discovery of a whale that sings in a frequency too low for other whales to hear in a metaphor for solitude, loneliness and the empty search for companionship. Moving from one subject close to their hearts to another, recorded live at the Dartmoor family home, the upright piano-accompanied A Song To Live By (lyrically sentimental in the vein of old music hall balladry) offers a mother's advice to her daughters.

The mood then shifts with the title track, a stripped down folk-blues etched on tuned down guitar that introduces a political protest edge to their work with an attack on the corruption and privatisation exercised by those in power couched with a warning that comeuppance will surely follow. A similar theme provides the bedrock of Down, Dog!, where good intentions are undermined by corruption and self-survival, only this time the musical setting is more dynamic, Lakeman's chugging guitar work reminiscent of Richard Thompson while a trad-styled melody is interwoven with a poppier cascading anthemic chorus featuring Roberts providing her own multi-tracked harmonies.

Sandwiched between, the pair travel to Mexico for the tenderly melancholic La Moneca (Queen of the Island Dolls), a song inspired by a memorial to a drowned child created by a doll-collecting hermit, its softly whispered child-voiced introduction (possibly provided by one of the couple's twin daughters, who made the toy dolls videos for both this and Child Owlet) before the gently rippling, infectiously swaying melody takes hold with Thomas adding accordion colour.

Traditional folk tales resurface in the final stretch, beginning with Rusalka, a revisiting of the oft-told tale of the mermaid luring fishermen to their doom to feed her own offspring, the ethereal ambiance created by sparse guitar and pure soaring vocals mirroring the siren call of the subject. Then comes The Banishing Book, a sprightly clattering and innuendo-laced bawdy cautionary tale based on The Maid's Conjuring Book from Thomas d'Urfey's Songs of Wit and Mirth before the second of album's actual trad arrangements in the form of The Robber Bridegroom, its tale of treachery and discovery building from just voice and fierce acoustic guitar to a more full-blooded finale.

One final self-penned tune closes the album, Soft The Morning Sun a song of love and longing for one far away (doubtless inspired by the pair's time spent apart while he was touring with his brother and she was raising the kids), bringing a low key, but softly glowing closure to an assured and superbly executed collection that will fully warrant a place in the ranks of 2015's finest folk moments.

Mike Davies