Gilmore & Roberts
Album: The Innocent Left
Label: Navigator
Tracks: 10
Website: http://www.gilmoreroberts.co.uk

A reasonable body count, illicit relationships, an ineffective scarecrow and a cross dressing doctor, we can only be talking folk music and what folk music we're talking. "The Innocent Left" is the latest album that comes from the duo Gilmore Roberts so you know it's going to come with a mark of quality.

Kat Gilmore & Jamie Roberts are one of the most formidable duos on the folk circuit, they draw in the tradition and add to it a sound that picks up the acoustic folk movement, that sort of permeated into acoustic pop in the late eighties early ninties. The Gilmore Roberts blend is a little more from the tradition, but the sound is gorgeous, the fiddle, the voices, the guitar.

"Doctor James", one of Kat's songs, is the story of Dr. James Barry a doctor/surgeon from Victoria's realm who made a number of medical breakthroughs, both during his army career and on civvie street. A lot of which was no longer feted once it was discovered after his death that he was a she and at some point had had a child. Not only is it an absolutely glorious song, it's an important piece of social history, that's what music's about.

It's followed by "Shuffle & Deal" which features another duo, the Lovell Sisters, better known as Larkin Poe. Hearing the duo of duos sparking off each other really is a treat and always good to hear that something a little bit different. It's also the track that I have a little niggle about and that is simply that it occurs too early in the album.

So far I've drawn attention to Kat Gilmore's songs, but Jamie is no slouch with a pen either and I don't think it's coincidence that his songs both open and close the album, ranging from the morose to the downright macabre, "The Stealing Arm".

"The Innocent Left" is an album that covers so much, people and history, places and ideas. There's songs you want to sing-a-long to and other reflect upon thoughtfully, quite simply, Gilmore Roberts have done it again.

Neil King