(Basin Rock)
Hayden’s traditional songs unfurl at a glacial pace, as heavy as the sodden moors at midnight

Based in the West Yorkshire cosmic mecca of Todmorden, known for its alternative music scene as much as its wild weather, Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions start the year with traditional songs as heavy as the sodden moors at midnight. They were inspired by her mother’s lulling singing and unfurl at a glacial pace, with analogue synths and delicate banjos buoying up Hayden’s deep, measured voice. The mood is largely one-note: slow, stoned and serious.

To sit in its stillness, however, can be a moving thing. In moments in Blackwater Side (well known from versions by Anne Briggs, Sandy Denny and Bert Jansch), Hayden conveys well the sleepy, post-coital pleasures of the “best part of the night” when her protagonist and “the Irish lad I spied” did “sport and play”. Images in the industrial revolution-era song Factory Girl are also conjured up with a languorous power, like the woman’s cheeks “red like the roses that bloom in the spring”.