The Punch Bowl

Having come to the brilliant Seth Lakeman through his Mercury nominated 'Kitty Jay' and the follow up 'Freedom Fields' and having seen an electrifying live performance at Liverpool's Academy. I had procrastinated about getting Seth's first album which appears to have been lost from critical evaluation on the Amazon pages. I presumed that perhaps a younger Seth had been a 'finger in yer ear' Martin Carthy traditionalist and The Punch Bowl was full of earnest but dull renditions of sea shanties and songs about maiden's losing their....thingymagig.In truth, The Punch Bowl is a pure Seth Lakeman album full of catchy riffs,wailing fiddles and those emotive vocals. With Cara Dillon providing sweet backing vocals and the rest of the Lakeman clan rustling up the instrumental backing,the album chunkers along apace and all too quickly...in a mere 28 minutes...ends.Pity Seth couldn't have filled it out for another 10 or 15 minutes and it could have been a belter. Whatever...it's still a fine short piece of work from one of our finest Nu-Folk performer/composers.

In this debut from Seth Lakeman he reveals himself to be an artist the equal of the mighty Spiers and Boden.For me, folk music is all about story telling, and Lakeman is a great story teller. His lyrics paint beautiful pictures, and are delivered with style with his distinctive voice. The musical arrangements are relatively simple, yet still interesting. They manage at the same time to evoke an old world feeling, yet still sound fresh and modern. Despite it being labelled folk it has a bit of an indie feel, and will appeal to a modern, with it audience.This is a great debut album, and I look forward to following Lakeman's career as he progresses.

Loved it

Just fine, no problems. Cheers.

I love Seth Lakeman's music, the man is a genius and deserves to be better known. Some great songsand tunes, well worth it.

His songs inspire me and his music moves me. I cannot wait to see and hear this brillant musican live. I am seriously thinking about picking up the violin again, due to Seth's skill with the bow and fiddle.

Excellent as always.

Great artist, all his albums are brilliant!