Seth Lakeman - King & Country

Sit back, shut your lids and banish all thoughts of the modern world with this West-Country folkster's latest offering, 'King & Country'. A rather stately affair, it sounds like it was created in some mystical forest, in another time, when bands like Pentangle still roamed the earth. While destined never to bother the charts too much (which was probably never the idea anyway), it offers some neat fretwork and is surely a safe bet to be the only song you'll hear this year whose lyrics are a delicate take on the tensions and factions created by the English civil war. [Barry Jackson]