Caedmon

Caedmon’s only album, recorded while studying at Edinburgh University, has long been a cipher for acid folk fans – its initial obscurity (only 500 copies, privately pressed) reinforced by years of bootleg versions, before a definitive reissue in 2020. It’s an album that’s not entirely sure what it’s doing, some of the time, though that innocence adds to the charm, somehow; and when the quintet do focus their attention, on the drift-song of “Beyond the Sacred Mile”, and the open-ended group-mind that coheres on “Sea Song” and the aquatic, lightly jazzy “Storm,” they’ve clearly figured out how to arrange a folk-rock song such that it’s not just a re-tread of Steeleye Span or Fairport Convention. Angela Naylor’s voice is the gem here, a finely tuned thing, flittering and weaving through the songs, swooping down on the melodies, other times marvelling as though in a hazed daze.