One look at the line-up for the recent Cambridge Folk Festival showed that, contrary to its dowdy image as an immutable, restrictive musical form, folk is constantly open to reinterpretation. The dark, gospel-influenced ballads of Nick Cave and the rocky acoustic blues of Eric Bibb sat happily beside such usual suspects as Loudon Wainwright III. As the old song goes, the times are a-changing.
In their individual ways, young musicians across Britain are exploring folk's possibilities, redefining its parameters and experimenting with its sounds. Hull's Salako, Newcastle's Kathryn Williams and Londoners Ben and Jason share little but a love for Nick Drake and lush but simple orchestration. What they're producing, however, is today's versions of folk.
Bringing up the rear are Circulus, a London-based quartet who are as yet unsigned but who have the tunes and charisma to do well. The main songwriter, Michael Tyack, looks like a university tutor in medieval literature but is a dab hand with an acoustic guitar, not to mention his skills on the banjo, lute and the Persian saz (it looks like a bouzouki but its sound is fuller). Singer Emma Steele is a perky lass with a delicate, twanging voice, and an engaging penchant for deflating her band's muso pretensions by yelling out "yee-haw" and laughing at their encyclopedic collection of instruments.
The spiritually inclined lyrics aren't particularly exciting, mainly concentrating on relationship traumas, typically demanding "what is love if you don't feel peace of mind?" The music, however, is thrilling. Tyack and his guitar partner Eric Anholm create sumptuous, chiming harmonies: on Gently Johnny Part III, the notes seem to be conducting their own secret romance even as Steele sings of loneliness. Jason Hobart's deceptively modest bass is sonorous yet animated, the perfect foil to Anholm's bright slide guitar and Tyack's glittering banjo in the True Lover's Farewell.
What makes Circulus so appealing is their ability to confound expectations: they display a fondness for curious tunings and a dexterity with odd time signatures. Anholm makes his slide guitar sound like a sitar while Tyack makes his guitar trill like the lute he's just put aside.
Tradition - whether Elizabethan dance or Nashville country - informs everything they do: Texas is pure rhinestone pop, while Kemp's Jig just needs to be played in a barn, rather than a venue the size of a dog kennel, to inspire a ceilidh. However, Circulus have enough imagination to make each song beguiling, no matter what its origins.
