Lucy Ward: Adelphi Has to Fly - review

Lucy Ward is a 21-year-old singer, guitarist and concertina player from Derby who already has an impressive set of admirers; she is joined on her debut album by a band that includes two established folk duos, O'Hooley and Tidow and Megson, with Megson's Stu Hanna playing banjo, mandolin and guitar, and providing the inventive production work. She has also acquired the folk scene's fascination for songs about death, and this mature and varied set matches painful laments against the occasional humorous song. She may be surrounded by established musicians, but doesn't rely on them, as she proves with her unaccompanied treatment of A Stitch in Time, Mike Waterson's story of a wife's revenge against a drunken husband. Elsewhere, she provides a delicate solo vocal on The Fairy Boy, before being joined by Belinda O'Hooley's bravely sparse piano accompaniment, and demonstrates more gutsy singing on a rousing Maids When You're Young. But the best songs are the bleakest: Death is a thoughtful setting for verses supposedly written by Anne Boleyn before her execution, while Bricks and Love is a self-composed ballad of death and the folk scene, based on a true story. It's the most poignant new song I've heard this year.