ALBUM REVIEW: Awake, Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage, Sungrazing Records, Out Now

Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage, guests of Spalding Folk Club in June 2017, are back with their second album together.

Awake is a clear statement of intent from the Cambridge folk duo who have decided to take their interpretation of a musical genre traditionally associated with bearded cider drinkers in an American direction.

Six of the songs are Hannah and Ben's own works, including the banjo-heavy Selkie Song, Western ballad I Met a Man and A Thousand New Moons on which Ben gets to express his grainy, throaty Ricky Ross (Deacon Blue) vocals.

The American theme dominating Awake comes across unashamedly with covers of the Woody Guthrie/Billy Bragg song Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key and Pete Seeger's One Grain of Sand.

But the prairie songs go on as Hannah and Ben have a ball with (The) Santa Fe Trail, a song originally written in 1911 by James Grafton Rogers.

With the title track of the album, the folk duo turn to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's The Boxer for inspiration, if the slow burning mood of the song is anything to go by.

Meanwhile, the intriguingly-titled track called 7 is really a sophisticated expansion of Dave Dodds' folk classic Magpie, memorably performed by another folk duo to visit Spalding, The Unthanks, at the BBC Proms just a week ago.

Awake finishes with the addictive Sanders and Savage original Reaching, with its lingering climax likely to have fans of this increasingly creative songwriting duo begging for more.

Hannah Sanders' description, during their visit to Spalding last year, of hers and Ben's musical partnership as "troubadours of joyful music" is powerfully reinforced by Awake.

Review by Winston Brown