TWO’S COMPANY – Go Together (own label TCFCD01)

go togetherGo Together is the first album from Yorkshire-based duo Two’s Company, David Jenkinson and Alice Baillie. Both sing, David plays a variety of stringed instruments, notably guitar and cello-mandolin, while Alice plays flute and writes the original songs that blend with the traditional titles. The album is all acoustic and recorded without studio trickery except briefly on ‘Three Rivers’ – I imagine that this is exactly how they sound live.

The opening track is the traditional ‘Cupid The Ploughboy’, a song from Dorset that I didn’t know, which sets the pastoral feel of the album. Second is an original song, ‘Bobby’, which tells the tale – spoiler alert – of a young piper who loses three fingers in a mill accident and whose dream of playing for the queen is shattered. It’s told with great sympathy but I can’t help feeling that Megson or Nancy Kerr would have injected some passion into the story and berated the mill owner rather more.

David and Alice take ‘All Among The Barley’ at a statelier pace than is usual and, while it isn’t exactly a rafter raising chorus, it needs a bit more welly. There are two instrumental sets. The first, ‘Winterfall’ is a set of two tunes by Michael Raven and here, Two’s Company show that they can rock it out when they want to but the second set, ‘Island Tunes’, tends back towards bucolic gentleness despite some sparkling flute playing..

There is one niggle and I’m afraid I’m going to keep banging on about it. ‘Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?’, or whatever you wish to call it, is not a traditional song and while it is similar to an old Scottish tune it was originally written down by Robert Tannahill before Francis McPeake wrote ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ using a variant of the melody. Are we all clear now?

So, Go Together is nice pastoral album and a good starting point for Two’s Company. Alice has a clever way with a lyric – ‘The Grove’ is particularly good – but for me it needs rather more fire in its belly.

Dai Jeffries

‘Will Ye Go, Lassie, Go?’ – live: