» Review: Nancy Elizabeth + Mary Hampton
They may have gone untrumpeted at the BBC 2 Folk Awards last week. But this double-bill of Manchester’s Nancy Elizabeth and Brighton’s Mary Hampton was all the proof you need that folk is flickering back to life via some young and very vivid imaginations. Headliner Elizabeth played from her two albums of soft, solitudinous country-folk, accompanying ‘Feet of Courage’ with only a shaker, a stick hitting a chair back, and the heavy boots she’d sweated away all night in especially for this purpose. Her head was in a mess, she said, because she’d just fallen in love. With an accountant. It was a lovely set, but she suffered just slightly from following Hampton, who grows more arresting with every performance, her piercing attic folk veiled with the softest of deliveries and the ghost of a wry smile. ‘The Bird In The Bush’, the spellbindingly erotic traditional once sung by Anne Briggs, could have been her own.
Prince Albert, 3 February
4/5
Bella Todd
