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Nancy Elizabeth - Wrought Iron

Those acerbic wags who like to make out that modern folkies are merely goths who regressed one step further would've found plenty to chortle down their sleeves at on Nancy Elizabeth's debut, 2007's Battle & Victory. But the singer who armed herself with a slew of anachronistic instruments first time round has wisely dispensed with the Appalachian dulcimer this time, and as a result Wrought Iron is a rich and dark stew which owes a debt to the satanic mills of both the past and the present.

It's not hard to see why the Wiganer chose locations like the Faroes, rural Spain and North Wales to record it. Impressively self produced, Wrought Iron feels like it's the product of solitude and is best enjoyed the same way; you almost certainly will not want to put a donk on it. The time alone wasn't spent in some kind of penitent fever however. As the Fleetwood Mac-esque vocal rises and falls of Bring On The Hurricane prove, there's not a hint of cabin fever, and although opening instrumental Cairns is simply a naked piano complemented by with the singer's own multi-tracked harmonies, the ambient overtones are uplifting rather than maudlin.

In essence everything here is a proudly stubborn paradox for those hirsute fans of her earlier work. For every more traditional arrangement - Tow The Line, or Ruins - there's a nod to the here and now, such as the trumpet that brings understated grace on Lay Low, or the synths (Hrr-umph) which add a cutting-edge dimension to Feet Of Courage. The Leaf label she's signed to was also the sometime home of eccentric Japanese ambient composer Susumu Yokota, and her collaborative work with both him and the likes of Efterklang and Our Broken Garden is richly observed in the ethereal dreaminess of Cat Bells.

But Nancy Elizabeth Cunliffe, to use her full name, is finally revealed in toto as a songwriter of the grand tradition by The Act, Wrought Iron's black-as-pitch centrepiece, the final twist which backs up her assertion that the soul of her music is "Full of beauty, but also danger". A brooding murder ballad driven on by a menacing semi-acoustic that feels like a snake sunning itself on a rock, Oh, there will be bad deeds done tonight, emphasised by the mocking harmonica being played by sunset crows on a telephone line. It may the best song Polly Harvey never wrote, but it's a half made whole by the closing Winter Baby, it's guilty, a blood-soaked twin, at once lonely/sparse and resonating with a childlike dreaminess that suggests Venice, water and scarlet-clad nightmares. The frosty ambiguity is a suitable climax to a work that has depths far beyond it's premise, one which underlines that there are more pretenders these days to Kate Bush's mantle than Florence Welsh. Amen.

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