Chris Wood - None The Wiser (2013)

If you're looking for one of the finest contemporary poet-singers in England, look no further than the man with an amplified guitar round his neck, a Hammond organ and string bass at his back, and a sheaf of songs in his pocket drawn from extensive tours of the UK as it lurched and fell through the biggest economic reversal of modern times. ‘All we really have is ourselves’, says Wood, by way of introduction to this quietly powerful, astute and vivid set of songs. ‘And the most precious of what we make lies in our connection to each other. They have not found a way of taxing what flows between us and ourloved ones’.

Set amidst Wood's own songs is a take on William Blake's ‘Jerusalem, stripped of Hubert Parry's tune; Hugh Lupton's ‘Tally of Salt, a homage to marriage; the traditional ‘Little Carpenter’; and, with pianist Martin Butler, a setting of John Clare's ‘I Am, written during the poet's last days in an asylum in Northampton. The title track is a broad panorama made up of telling details and overheard asides. ‘The Sweetness Game’ combines love song and political protest, while ‘A Whole Life Lived’ has an older man aghast at hearing his young self in full spate. The backing is spare, intimate, and with the same kind of telling detail that is in the lyrics. Is Chris Wood currently our best contemporary writer of folk songs? On the strength of None the Wiser, the answer may well be yes.