The Changing Room
Album: Behind The Lace
Label: Self Released
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.thechangingroommusic.com

"Behind The Lace" is the debut album from duo, The Changing Room, and which has been inspired by the music, tales and myths of one of England's most enigmatic counties, Cornwall. At the core, The Changing Room are Sam Kelly and Tanya Brittain who are supported on the album by Jamie Francis, Evan Carson and Morrigan Palmer-Brown.

Around this group are a number of guest artists, which, very unusually for a West Country album at the moment doesn't include Lukas Drinkwater, though his 3 Daft Monkeys cohort Tim Ashton does, as does Jon Cleave of Fisherman's Friends. Also featuring are choral groups The Oggymen and Polperro Fishermen's Choir. Other solo artists include Jennifer Crook andJohn McCusker, which is by any standards an impressive array.

If that line up gives the impression that "Behind The Lace" is as much a recording project as a conventional album, then it's hard not to disagree, this is an album with a concept running through it, it also allows for the album to really capture the different aspects of the county, its industry and its people.

It's an absolute delight of an album, one that captures a spirit as much as it does a sound. Part of that is the use of the choral groups, you can feel a real passion in the songs that feature them and it really adds a sense of community to the release.

If you take the definition as folk being music of the people, for the people than "Behind The Lace" is an absolutely epitome of that. This is an album of the land and the sea of challenges made and accepted and if Poldark doesn't have you looking at Cornwall again, this definitely should.

Sam Kelly and Tanya Brittain have crafted an album that is full of natural curves and grace and yet at the same time still speaks of a more rugged reality and it's a delight to listen to, it defines the now as surely as a rich vein of tin defined the then.

Neil King