Old wow

"Folksong and mother nature [are] indivisible passions for Sam Lee. The singer's third album, the first with Suede's Bernard Butler producing, fuses the two obsessions in dazzling fashion. Once again the songs are all traditional, while Lee has skilfully intercut some and "rewilded" them with the odd flourish - the "Old Wow" of the title is his name for an awestruck sense of nature ... Butler knows when to leave [Lee] alone, but adds jazzy shadings for The Garden of England and Sweet Sixteen, a touch of rock muscle for Lay This Body Down, and swelling strings for Soul Cake. There's also a spine-tingling duet with the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser ... It's a daring piece of chamber folk whose human dramas - abandonment, loss, love - come suffused with the natural world".

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"Lee's twee-free third album, produced by Bernard Butler and featuring Liz Fraser, is a stark reminder of this country's environmental concerns ... Butler has produced Old Wow like a soul record, full of space and warmth. For some, it will be too much: Lay This Body Down marries a Fleet Foxes-like intro with Bad Seeds slink. But this treatment fills Lee's clear, precise diction with a stark, longing quality that carefully handles and never sugarcoats its subjects. Add a sleepy Sunday-morning John Martyn jazz vibe, all walking bass, piano and shivery strings, and the effect is exquisite".

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"Sam Lee's tenor is a soulful, ravishing thing, and a reminder that folk musik is not some cosy celebration of a fake ruddy-cheeked past but a trenchant chronicle of love, loss and struggle. Spanning Romany gypsy music to and Afro-American spiritual, Old Wow takes as its theme our relationship with a damaged natural world. Bernard Butler produces and Liz Fraser of The Cocteau Twins duets on The Moon Shines Bright ... It's not as innovative a record as 2015's The Fade In Time - there are no samples or electronica here ... Nonetheless it's full of resonant music - the death-defying Lay This Body Down or the slow-building drama of Soul Cake are proof that the nightingales don't have all the best tunes".

"Top of the world" - "The title came to Lee when, walking in the wilds of Scotland, a buzzard swooped and screamed just above his head, giving him a sudden sense of wonder and connection with the natural world. Lee uses the term 'old wow' to describe this enlightening realisation - what the religious (and James Joyce) call an epiphany. Lee's epiphany also describes, he says, 'those experiences which exist beyond the natural realm which are often described in our folk songs' ... Old Wow is produced by Bernard Butler, who weaves wonderful soundscapes - with Matthew Barley's cello, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh's Hardanger d'amore, the voice of Elizabeth Fraser, Misha Mullov-Abbado's bass and percussion - and Lee wanders around these, as he might in the wilds of Scotland. He rambles a bit slowly, but sometimes Old Wow swoops down and suddenly everything becomes intense and clear".