Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin - Mynd

Mark of Excellence

This is quite simply a beautiful and ultra-confidently performed set of folk songs, traditional in their musical composition and also occasionally contemporary in their intelligent storytelling, as with Last Broadcast that honours the American journalist Marie Colvin who was killed last year whilst covering the siege of Homs in Syria. Both Philip Henry and Hannah Martin are consummate instrumentalists, though I particularly like the harmonica playing of Henry: the instrumental The Nailmakers’ Strike Part 1, with guitar and fiddle predominantly, segues gorgeously into the bluesy but also lush harmonica driven The Nailmakers’ Strike Part 2, a song about the action of 1852 in Halesowen [though it seems there was considerable poverty and unrest for a decade in the Dudley area where nailmaking was a major industry]. The short instrumental Elegy has Henry on slide dobro playing an Indian-tinged song that is achingly gentle. The album closes brilliantly on James Taylor’s [You Can] Close Your Eyes, a beautiful song in its own right and brave to cover, and even braver with Henry on lead vocal [he is a fine enough singer, but Martin rightly dominates the album with her folk clarity], but the soft harmonising and again slide dobro create a reverential space within which these two make their own musical mark.