ver the past dozen years, no one has tended the sacred flame of folk song more assiduously than London’s, Lee’s principal mission has been “finding new soundworlds for old songs”, many of them learned at the hearths of the travelling community. His third album, 2020’s, expanded the musical palette, setting Lee’s rich voice to innovative arrangements by Bernard Butler, the former Suede guitarist turned mature polymath.is more ambitious still.
The songs are Lee’s own, their singer cast as a shamanic figure wandering through landscapes hymned in folk song and poetry but now facing ecological collapse. Opener Bushes and Briars begins as a leisurely search for birdsong that is gradually subsumed by a menacing churn of violin, piano, guitar and discordant noise.