Martin Simpson - Purpose + Grace - Topic - TSCD584

Thirty-five years into his career, the Lincolnshire folk singer and guitarist Martin Simpson has perfected a professorial fusion of British and American forms.
The Sheffield Apprentice's provenance blurs in a hillbilly hootenanny, a transcript of an archive interview with the Kentucky musician Banjo Bill Cornet arcs around BJ Cole's swooping pedal steel, and there's a cinematically vast slide guitar reading of In The Pines.
But proficient and tasteful as Simpson is, his guests Dick Gaughan and June Tabor, both blessed with instantly affecting individual voices, steel the honours on Jamie Foyers and Strange Affair respectively.

(18/9/11)