Music : The Punch Bowl

Rating: - The punch bowl is a strong brew !
Having come to the brilliant Seth Lakeman through his Mercury nominated 'Kitty Jay' and the follow up 'Freedom Fields' and having seen an electrifying live performance at Liverpool's Academy. I had procrastinated about getting Seth's first album which appears to have been lost from critical evaluation on the Amazon pages. I presumed that perhaps a younger Seth had been a 'finger in yer ear' Martin Carthy traditionalist and The Punch Bowl was full of earnest but dull renditions of sea shanties and songs about maiden's losing their....thingymagig.
In truth, The Punch Bowl is a pure Seth Lakeman album full of catchy riffs,wailing fiddles and those emotive vocals. With Cara Dillon providing sweet backing vocals and the rest of the Lakeman clan rustling up the instrumental backing,the album chunkers along apace and all too quickly...in a mere 28 minutes...ends.
Pity Seth couldn't have filled it out for another 10 or 15 minutes and it could have been a belter. Whatever...it's still a fine short piece of work from one of our finest Nu-Folk performer/composers.