For lovers of British folk from the 1970s on, Peter Knight is a potent force – renowned for his years with Steeleye Span, in their 1970s heyday and from 1980 through to 2013’s classic set written with Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith.
The first iteration of his band Gigspanner was as a trio, releasing four albums between 2009 and 2017, while the big band version has released a live set and a studio album, 2020’s Natural Invention. The sextet comprises the original trio of Knight, guitarist Roger Flack and percussionist Sacha Trochet, alongside relative newcomers in Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin, and the great melodeon player John Spiers, veteran of another high-achieving folk big band, Bellowhead.
It’s a big album even for a big band – 11 tracks clocking in at around 75 minutes, with some stunning fiddle from Knight, especially on the lengthy “What Wondrous Love/Sweet Highland Mary” where his flights of invention and imagination are deftly and brilliantly augmented by the band. On the following “When Fortune Takes the Wheel” Spiers’ keening melodeon deftly shadows Martin’s vocals. These are all crack players immersed in British folk traditions, and they are also innovators, working out of those traditions.
Album opener “The Suffolk Miracle” is a 17th-century tale of love, class, death and ghostly reunion, while “Sovay’s” ripping yarn of a woman dressing up as a highwayman to test her lover’s rectitude is augmented by a scorching guitar solo at its close. “The Rolling of the Stones” is a tale of murder and ghostly return from Elizabethan times, while the Child ballad “Hind Horn” opens with scintillating dobro from Henry, and closes with some exquisite fiddle from Knight.
Stephen Foster’s parlour ballad “Hard Times Come Again No More” is sung by Knight, who again closes the song with tender solo playing before a heart beat drum leads into the energy release of “Arthur Peter’s Reel”, while the album’s closer is a three-tune set spanning a generous ten minutes, and packed with goodness, along with the rest of the album.
