Pumajaw - Jacky Daw

For many, the term 'folk' will always evoke scenes of cardigan-clad hippies, perhaps explaining the propensity for critics to regularly weld on a prefix and announce a new 'movement'. Freak-folk, neo-folk, anti-folk, psych-folk, counter-folk (for folk's sake - Ed) - and as the divisions multiply, soon everyone with a mandolin will be appointed a peerless practitioner of their own genre. Luckily, Pinkie Maclure and John Wills are more than capable of sustaining the pumajaw-folk subset: part mantric incantation, part Gothic Kate Bush, Jacky Daw pitches Maclure's remarkable voice over rhythmic instrumentation to create an oneiric sound that loops and swells with eerie intensity. Forget the token folk suffix, this is mesmerising. [Chris Buckle]