There are but three guarantees in life. Taxes, death and Seth Lakeman delivering magnificent albums. 13 studio albums and 23 years after he released his first solo effort, The Punch Bowl, Lakeman presents to the world a set that shows what you can do with a story and a song. From chasing the sinister ‘Black Fox’ across the fields of Dartmoor to a version of the oft played traditional ‘The Gallows Tree’, the combination of folklore and history has weaved its way across all the music that Lakeman has recorded, and his strength is his delivery and conviction in getting those tales out into the world.
‘Black Fox’ is especially luring, telling the tales of a supernatural being who lures huntsmen to meet their ends and was written after Lakeman spent his summer day walking through Wistman’s Wood and Crocken Tor. ‘Charlotte Dymond’ is probably the strongest of the set. With mandolin to the forefront, and inspired by a poem by Charles Causley, it concerns the 1844 murder of the titular 18 year old on the edge of Bodmin Moor by her boyfriend, the farmhand Matthew Weeks. Suitably downcast, especially compared to those songs around it, it lends a certain gravity which is much welcomed.
He is joined on this particular journey with friends along the way, collaborating with both Ward Thomas and Ian Anderson on the single ‘One More Before You Go’, and twice with the magnificent storyteller and songwriter Reg Meuross on Slow Down and Born to the Strain. Lakeman has spoken in interviews about naming the album The Granite Way due to the Dartmoor setting that ties a lot of the themes explored on the album together. He was inspired after finishing the 20th Anniversary tour of the Mercury Prize nominated Kitty Jay, which also had its roots deep in the Devon wilderness.
You are never far away from the sea with Lakeman and The Granite Way proves no different. None more so on the closing ‘Roll Back the Years’, where an old woman laments about how her fisherman father was lost to the sea during a storm, before declaring that she’d rather stay single than see any potential husband suffer the same fate. As the closing lines declare, it looks like history may have repeated itself. The melodeon playing of Archie Churchill Moss adds more kindling to the fire, lending a meatier edge to a lot of the music. Lakeman’s regular loyal soldiers make up the rest of the band, including Benji Kirkpatrick and Ben Nicholls.
The album was recorded in just a week and that urgency and live nature comes across throughout, and the recordings will be easily translated to the live setting as the same set of musicians embark alongside Lakeman as he takes them on the road. As he has done for over 20 years, Lakeman continues to be the standard bearer and benchmark in English folk music. Long may he continue to dig songs from the soil and rescue tales from the sea.