Elizabeth & Jameson - Way Out West (2025)

Five years on from their debut, Hannah Elizabeth and Griff Jameson return, accompanied at times by banjo, mandolin, organ, drums and flute with his brother Gafyn on bass and her fellow former Said the Maiden member Kathy Pilkington on vocals for autobiographically-informed songs that range from the Welsh valleys to the Mississippi.

Opening with 'The New Town', a brief guitar and violin instrumental with samples that include someone calling "any old iron", more samples (a cassette being inserted?) introduce Elizabeth on the folksy pop leaving home song 'Mother Please' ("please take care of each other/I'm not the fist, was it like this for my brother… This will always be my home/I'll come back here someday"). On a similar note, that's followed by the slow walk sway of the slide-coloured, close harmony itchy feet-themed 'Hit The Road' ("we're not used to the grass growing under our feet"), one of several tracks that call to mind similar duos Megson and Paul Walker and Karen Pfieffer.

Casting similarly melancholic notes are the reflective loss of 'Will She Know?', the Welsh scenarios of the mournful place as identity-themed 'The Valley' ("she tries to see who she'd be outside the valley" and the industrial decline in the downcast hymnal-like and very Megson-like 'The Old Town' ("It's a broken town now/Smaller somehow/Since the soul has been ripped from this place").

The Ty'r Pwll Mob join for the rowdy anti-wealth protest 'YCHAFI!', a Welsh expression of disapproval with the lines "I hate the fact that those who care for a living/Are so often cared for the very least/While those who care for nothing/Will sit with wine and dine and feast". In contrast, Pilkington on harmonies. 'The Fight's Not In Us Anymore' is as weary and resigned as the title suggests, including the lament that "the radio won't play us any news/It's just a mouthpiece for the stories that they choose".

Not a David Grey cover, the swaying 'Nos Da Cariad', Welsh for "goodnight, darling", nonetheless summons the same sentiments but is here again veined with unrest and disconsolate feelings ("I'm so tired and broken and useless/But what can I do").

The past and what has been lost with it underpin the sensory childhood memories of 'Hammer Those Keys', a song that conjures a funeral and the choir singing 'The Old Rugged Cross' ("she cried when someone told her/These songs would do him proud/And how he always talked of how she played") and closing with the piercing poignancy of "so goodbye to first loves/And hello to the sweetness of pain/They've all come to hear you again/So hold on to those first loves and hammer those keys with some might".

Inspired by a visit to Nashville, the landscape shifts to America with, Lachlan Golder on slide, accompanying country colours for 'Tennessee', a song of migration as Jameson asks "Is it everything you hoped for/Is it everything you need… Is it all you came for/Or is Tennessee too far?". Staying in the South it crosses states for, opening with the sound of flowing water, birdsong and a compere's yeehaw introduction to the star attraction, General & The Jacksons ("I've flown in from the mountains 'specially just to be here/You say my accent's kinda neat"), another song of memories (There's something in this drink that's really got me thinking 'bout you") and music ("Come on darlin' kick off your shoes/There's room here on the dance floor and baby I got moves for you") with the suitably energetic rock n roller 'Taffy On The Mississippi' featuring blazing fiddle, banjo and Tom Doughery on washboard before ending with a hidden untiled fingerpicked bluegrassy bonus track about how the narrator inherited and restored his brother's old guitar, the metaphor not too hard to unpick.

Suffused with a sense of loss and change, but also of warmth and compassion, it's a slow but irresistible grower that fully cements their standing in the UK acoustic folk scene.