Chris Cleverley - We Sat Back and Watched It Unfold (2019)

Four years on from his impressive yet somewhat tentative debut, Apparitions, the Birmingham singer-songwriter returns with an album that marks a giant leap in terms of musical prowess, self-confidence and lyrical acumen.

Alongside the vocal backings of Kim Lowings (who plays piano on six tracks) and Kathy Pilkinton from his new trio line-up, he’s joined by many of the great and good from the contemporary folk scene, among them cellist Graham Coe, bassist Luke Drinkwater, co-producer Sam Kelly, Evan Carson on drums, and violinists Marion Fleetwood and Hannah Martin (Edgelarks).

It’s a decidedly different approach to his debut, more immediate and musically accessible, launching with Jamie Francis on banjo, flautist Katie Stevens and Fleetwood on violin for the tumbling waltzing rhythms of The Arrows And the Armour, a joyous song about the sensations of falling in love as the butterflies fly in through the hole in the heart pierced by God’s arrow. Lyrically, Cleverley often draws on the Elizabethan and metaphysical English poets of the Renaissance and there’s perhaps hints of John Donne here.