WEST OF EDEN – Cabin Songs (West of Music)

Cabin SongsEarlier this year, Sweden’s outstanding folk-rock combo, decamped to a summer house to lay down some more intimate-styled one-take recordings, including singer Jenny Schaub in sterling form on a reflective, Celtic folksy, upright bass-backed reading of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Everywhere’. The five other Cabin Songs are all originals, starting off with the lovely, rippling English traditional flavoured tones of the title track. More uptempo and driven by violin and banjo, Martin Schaub takes his sole lead vocal for ‘Lizzie Went A-Walking’ which has more of a backwoods country feel, leading on to the resonant acoustic guitar work of the summery cascades of ‘Scarecrow Lament’.

It ends, all too soon, first with the Celtic-coloured pizzicato fiddle backed tale of ‘The Fickle Hearted Girl’ and, then, the evocative fingerpicked lost love ‘Counting Sheep’. Available digitally, it’s yet another reminder that, in a perfect world, they would be international megastars.

Mike Davies

Artists’ website: www.westofeden.com