A Best of Dark Britannia Part 1 on the Moon

More Spook Folk on the Moon! In my recent post on the marvellous sounds of The Hare and the Moon, I mentioned they only had two tracks on Deezer or Spotify at present. These tracks are on two of the four in the Dark Britannia series that has turned out to be a gold mine of some great songs.

The playlist below is culled from the last two collections - Hail Be You Sovereigns Lief And Dear from 2013 and John Barleycorn Reborn: Rebirth from 2011. It kicks off with a track from the spookiest of spook folkers the aforementioned The Hare And The Moon, but the rest is not generally as spooky and I have shamelessly chosen the most straight forward and accessible 27 tracks from a total of 63.

As with The Hare and the Moon it is a mixture of ancient and the not so ancient and many of the songs may well have survived due to the efforts of Cecil Sharp, who was Blighty's very own precursor to Alan Lomax. Newer songs such as Under England's Sky by Six Penny Wayke would not be out of place on an Uncle Tupelo record.

A suggestion for Dark Britannia V would be Bobby Heron which, as far as I can tell, is a modern folk masterpiece from the remarkable Nadine Shah

Now on the Moon A Best of Dark Britannia Part 2