The Accidental - There Were Wolves

Listening to There Were Wolves - the first album from a collective of musicians and songwriters including The Memory Band's Stephen Cracknell, Tunng's Sam Genders, The Bicycle Thieves' Hannah Caughlin and singer/songwriter Liam Bailey - it's easy to form a mental picture of the participants huddled in Cracknell's darkened lounge, spinning their web of gilt-edged folk. And that's pretty much how it happened, with the unromantic help of a PC and a pair of microphones. As the name suggests, The Accidental coalesced through a series of chance encounters, and the members' individual talents have combined here to effortlessly imaginative effect. The Closer I Am is a Beta Band-like bluesy ballad, while first track Knock Knock invokes an abiding feel of '70s pagan folk in the vein of The Wicker Man soundtrack, without such sinister overtones. Except, that is, on Wolves, an otherworldly depiction of that most worldly of phenomena: boozed-up males on the pull. Magical realism, anyone? [Nick Mitchell]