Straws in the Wind

This is as good a Carthy/Swarb CD as you'll find - including all their classics from the past. Sounding like a pair of 20-something year olds, fired up by English songs and tunes and having a ball, C and S revisit the seminal (I know, a messy-sounding adjective) "Penguin Book of English Folk Songs" for almost all of this collection, with a couple of Swarbtunes.This is voice/guitar/fiddle traditional music, unadorned, played by two masters of their craft and as near to perfect as you'll get in this field.I love it ... you can tell.

Given the pedigree of these artists I was a bit disappointed by the generally rather dour tone of this collection of songs.

Rags Reels and Airs I've been a fan of swarb and carthy both individually and together for very many years. I received this for christmas and approached it with some apprehension. These "old tymes sake" reunions are often a dissappointment, either complacent, smug, trying too hard or simply having lost the plot or the skills. Given how terribly ill Swarb looked the last few times i saw him play was hardly encouraging either.The apprehensions were entirely misplaced. This is a complete gem, it stands quite happily alongside everything else they have done and is in every way a pleasure to listen to. Betraying the advancing years comes not from Swarb whose playing is as crisp and earthy as ever, but from Carthy, whose fine voice occasionally falters, though the guitar remains a solid accompaniment to the fiddle.My only complaint is to Amazon (yes, you) who list this as a Carthy record only - Shouldn't Swarbrick's name appear there too chaps? (i searched for it under Swarbrick and couldn't work out why i couldn't find it - correct this and you might sell a few more!)