Straws in the Wind

Whenever Martin Carthy, perhaps Britain's most influential folk singer/guitarist of the modern era, and Dave Swarbrick, the renowned fiddler, team up — as they've done on and off for four decades — folk enthusiasts applaud loudly. The 2001 release Both Ears & the Tail was in fact a 1966 recording, preceding both Carthy's stint with Steeleye Span and Swarbrick's with Fairport Convention, but Straws in the Wind is a new collaboration, their first since 1992's Skin & Bone, and it's a lovely one at that. It doesn't get any more traditional than this: all but a couple of the songs interpreted by the duo here were found in the 1959 Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, and, with the exception of guest guitarist (and the album's producer) Kevin Dempsey on one track, the Swarbrick-penned "My Heart's in New South Wales," the only instrumentation here is provided by Carthy and Swarbrick. With both musicians playing as brilliantly as ever and Carthy's voice as expressive as it's ever been, this is a folk purist's dream. These are, by their very nature, songs of times past, echoes of a world that no longer exists. The pair treats the repertoire with all due reverence, but the undeniable intimacy they've established over the years allows for a little more feisty give and take than they might have entered in during their more intense earlier years.