UNLESS you were at the Cambridge Folk Festival last summer, you may not yet be familiar with "the festival's new darlings", Darlingside, from their British debut.
Record label Thirty Tigers has needed no encouragement to re-release the Massachusetts indie-folk quartet's album, Birds Say, to coincide with a January and February tour built around Glasgow's Celtic Connections.
If they were a surprise hit last year, then there is no excuse not to do a spot of musical twitching this time. Birds Say is as joyous as, well, birdsong to our ears when apparently they're actually singing "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough".
Darlingside would never utter anything so base! Instead their lyrics are literary, erudite and wryly witty, and such is their vocal and musical dexterity that all four band members can handle lead vocals while melancholic instrumentation switches gracefully between folk, bluegrass, indie rock and chamber pop.
White Horses, Harrison Ford and the title track are particular delights, and whereas most comparisons will be made with Fleet Foxes, Stornoway are a better fit.
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