Cruel Folk certainly lay their cards on the table. It wouldn’t take Sherlock Holmes to detect that they have a penchant for the dark side of the folk tradition, long before one actually hears the music. The cover of Love, Loyalty And Other Lies is a picture of a noose hanging from a tree - in the dark, of course. ‘Mors Longa, Vita Brevis’ is written on the back.  Inside the sleeve there is an old black-and-white photograph of dead rabbits suspended from a line, guarded by an unfriendly looking dog.  The other old black-and-white photograph portrays a toddler carrying a big gun, with another unfriendly looking dog by his side. There’s a more modern photograph of the Norfolk duo making a determined effort to look glum, and finally we are informed that ‘several serfs were hideously mutilated in the making of this album.’ I think we get the point, lads. This isn’t going to be like The Spinners. By the time we get to hear the track Merrie England, it comes as no surprise at all to discover that it is about a massacre.

Cruel Folk are Sean and Paul Holden. Most of the sings are written by the Holdens, but often in the style of traditional ballads. Helpful sleevenotes - a worthy folk tradition in itself - elucidate. Greenwood Tree is typical:

‘A boy meets girl story, done in the traditional style. So roughly speaking: boy meets girl, boy and girl get it on, girl gets pregnant, boy gets upset, murders her and buries her under a tree. She then comes back and spends the next few hundred years haunting any lovers foolish enough to come near the tree. We wanted something a little more upbeat, and this is the result. True, it all ends badly, but hey, that’s what we do.’

Sean’s instrument of choice is the mandocello, while Paul plays a variety of guitars. The album is thankfully free of soft-rock drum and bass. The sleeve tells us of former heavy metal drummer Sean ‘seeing the acoustic light’ during ‘his first trip to the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2001, and in particular his first experience of a mandocello, which can of course have no better advertisement than Steve Knightley’. This ‘proved proved to be a life-changing experience, rekindling a long-latent interest that had first been stirred by Martin Carthy and Roy Harper many years before’.

Indeed, Show of Hands is the closest musical reference point for Cruel Folk. If you like the sound of that popular duo then you might like this duo too. The guitar-dominated musical texture is rather pleasing, and the production brings this out well, adding plenty of neat little touches to boot. This collection also contains some strong melodies, some thoughtful, witty and sensitive lyrics and evocative vocals, suggesting that Cruel Folk’s appeal doesn’t rest upon their penchant for gothic gruesomeness as much as they might think.

On My Space they describe themselves a sounding like ‘a dark, sword-wielding horseman loitering outside the door of your farmhouse.’ If that renders their sound appealing to you, get this. But even if you think you could do without such sounds, thank you very much, you might yet enjoy this album.

Cruel Folk play the Milkmaid Folk Club, Bury St Edmunds on Friday 3 October.

Buy the album from Cruel Folk's website

Writer: Rychard Carrington