The Askew Sisters - In the Air or the Earth (2014)

When Martin Simpson and co played the magical Elizabethan Sessions at Cecil Sharp House earlier this year, Emily Askew’s arsenal of early-music instruments came close to stealing the show. She’s now reunited with her sister Hazel on another meticulously researched folk project. The duo draw on a narrow palette, vocals shimmering above fiddles, viola, melodeons and concertina; but the range of the songs, from the melancholia of The Young Girl Cut Down in Her Prime to the jaunty Old Father William, slowly casts its spell.