Barton Hollow perfectly straddles the worlds of Folk and Country, adopting the storytelling soul of Country with the sparse, corner of a pub instrumentation of traditional Folk music. The tone is sombre, yet uplifting, invoking the reflective feeling that one often gets upon reaching the end of a brilliant book. The real joy in this album is the superb marriage of Joy Williams and John Paul White’s voices, which stand up brilliantly alone during the solo and call and response sections, but blend into something spectacular when harmonising. Thankfully, this strength is allowed to take centre stage as, by and large, the arrangements are fairly restrained. The songwriting is excellent throughout, but the momentum does slow a little towards the end, which is a slight shame, but otherwise this is an exquisite debut.

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