Loft Singers
Album: The Bedmaking
Label: Wild Goose
Tracks: 15
Website: http://www.loftsingers.moonfruit.com

With the current penchant for all things choral, it's been really good to get a cd from a choir focusing on English folk song. The Loft Singers of the title being the Andover Museum Loft Singers, who are a community choir that formed back in in 1996.

"The Bedmaking" was actually recorded back in 2011 under the stewardship of Paul Sartin, who is probably best known for being a member of Bellowhead, had a choral scholarship at Oxford, but which was only recently released.

The title track, one that has a curiously erotic feel, is taken from a version that was originally collected in my home county of Dorset, but across the fifteen tracks on the album most geographical regions of England get checked. Similarly there is a nice range of dates associated with the songs assembled on this release.

As well as the vocal quality, this is an album that has so much going for it. For a start there's a wide range of subject matter. A lot of similar compilation focus on the forces songs and the songs celebrating and scorning the activities of the criminal community, with a feeling of the darker the better. "The Bedmaking" on the other hand, has lots of shade with the inclusion of both social and community songs, with the occasional nod to humour.

In addition, there is a good balance between the better known songs, "Byker Hill" and "The Wild Rover" with songs that don't get quite so many out outings, in the recorded medium at least, "The Wycombe Caning Girl" and "The Hog's Eye Man" being examples of the latter.

I have to say I've really enjoyed "The Bedmaking" this is arguably folk music in one of its truest forms and it's superbly performed. This is an album that The Andover Loft Museum Singers can be really, really proud of not just because of the quality of the singing, but because this is great entertainment.

Neil King