Hannah Sanders and Ben Savage met twelve years ago, at a Folk Club, and have been making gorgeous Country-tinged Folk music ever since. On their frequent visits to Bristol, they have always performed as a duo. Until now.
To celebrate the release of their fourth album, In the Dark We Grow, they are joined by Jacob Stoney, on keys, Josh Clark, on drums, and Jon Thorne, on double bass. A brilliant duo becomes an exceptional band.
Starting with the traditional Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maids, there is a depth and a richness as brushed drums and a bubbling bass complement Savage’s acoustic guitar. This might be an old, old Folk song but Sanders injects it with a subtle shoulder shimmy, lends her extraordinary voice to it. She makes it something else, something better. Where her voice is heaven-bound, Savage is all gravel and growl, it has a vinyl-crackle to it. Together they create telepathic harmonies.
If Ribbons and Bows, taken from their 2016 album Before the Sun, is their “cheeriest song about dying” then it is Savage that makes it so. An old-time banjo tune, played on guitar, it is full of desert dust and lush harmonies. Sanders plays Appalachian dulcimer, the high-wire whine thrums alongside drums and bass help to push the wind through the wires. It’s upbeat with enough Country for it to swing.
The thing that has always separated Sanders and Savage from so many other folk-y duos, is Sanders’ incredible voice. On Reynardine she is full of Folk-revival loveliness, producing echoes of Sandy Denny, while there’s more of a Bobbie Gentry huskiness to The Werewolf. She has the perfect blend of darkness and light, of earthbound honesty and a stratospheric thrill. There’s even, on Quiet Joys of Brotherhood, from In the Dark We Grow, the silken caress of All About Eve’s Julianne Regan.
Sanders and Savage have played in Bristol plenty of times in the last twelve years but, this time, it is the band that makes things fantastic. Stoney’s swirly 60s organ, on Reyardine, adds rockin’ soul to the stew, making this Folk duo closer to Delaney & Bonnie than anything more traditional. Elsewhere there are electronic washes and atmospheric hisses, and, on The Lilac Bloom, tinkling, jazz-y keys. There’s jazz in Thorne’s upright bass too, he has a gentle funkiness that betrays his time in trip-hoppers Lamb, and works beautifully with Clark’s subtle, hushed drums. When the two of them put the pedal down, as they do on The Lilac Bloom, there’s a proper wig-out though.
The final song of the evening is First Footing, a song of Sanders’ that lay half-finished for years before finally emerging on the new album. As the five of them play, waves crash around them, cymbals roll, the Hammond sound is back and those two voices combine to stop hearts. It’s a song about making your own luck, but there’s no luck here, this is talent, pure and simple.
When two become five, Hannah Sanders, Ben Savage and their band become utterly irresistible. This is, truly, the not-so-quiet joys of brother (and sister) hood.
Gavin McNamara
TallFolk 