AFTER 50 years as English folk music’s guiding light there’s not much left for Martin Carthy to achieve.

Everyone wants to play guitar like him, a long overdue lifetime achievement award is finally in the bag and the MBE sits pretty on the mantelpiece. Same goes for his daughter Eliza; the only folk musician to have been nominated twice for a Mercury.

Incredibly, though, they still had one thing on the to-do list: make an album together. Now they have and it’s folk’s most anticipated release in years, because although of the same stock, the pair couldn’t be more different stylistically; Martin the always faithful interpreter, Eliza the constant pusher of boundaries.

But one thing they do have in common is a love of ‘proper songs,’ which is showcased here in abundance. And you don’t get much more proper than Monkey Hair, which concerns a Scottish minister’s wife who won’t bear any more children, because her husband keeps sending them off to war to be killed. There are 11 similarly proper songs here, all of them performed with symbiotic ease against Martin’s delicate guitar work or Lisa’s Swarbrick-esque fiddle-playing.

Hard to pick a stand-out track, such is the quality on offer, but if pushed Happiness might just be the one, for no other reason than it features some pretty impressive whistling by Martin.

That said, from start to finish The Moral of the Elephant is nothing short of an absolute delight.