Kitty Jay

Seth Lakeman

Everyones talking about him since the Mercury Award nomination, most as if he's come from nowhere, but the guy has got to this place by working damn hard since he was at school, in the Lakeman Brothers, then with Kate Rusby, Kathryn Roberts and the angel voiced Cara Dillon ijn Equation, and then with Cara on her solo recording and touring.

His second album, again recorded in a fiercely independant manner, is a collection of songs evoking the landscape of Dartmoor. Great musicianship infuses the album with a sense of maturity, but it's his vocals, however, that lift him above the norm. this is contemporary folk music that acknowledges the legacy of the past, but refuse to get bogged down in that finger in the ear whine of the trad singer only looking to the past.

This album captures the soul of Dartmoor, not just the landscape but the human lives that run across it. As a landscape shapes the lives of the people that live upon it, those memories and experiences shape Seth's music and lyrics. Poignant yet never maudlin his songwriting celebrates the beauty and the hardness of Dartmoor, the title track is the most powerful on the album, Kitty Jay was a servant girl buried upon the moor whose loss is remembered by the mysterious ever present flowers on her grave.

His compositions sit beside the trad songs he's chosen seamlessly, all of them delivered in an assured manner that rewards repeated listening. he's got the ability of Cara Dillon to make a sad song an uplifting experience, an arm around your shoulder comforting rather than a wallowing in being down-beat. He stands above everything else around for feeling so fresh and vibrant.

his own site puts it well: "In 2002 Seth produced his first solo album. "The Punchbowl" received wide critical acclaim including a review in Froots magazine which said: "The songs don`t just glide smoothly by.....they get their claws into you". Seth has done the same again with "Kitty Jay", except this time the claws go even deeper"

Iain Hazlewood