Shirley Collins, the finest voice in English folk music, formed The Albion Country Band with her then-husband, Ashley Hutchings, in the early 1970s. Their desire was to focus more intently on English folk song and its attendant traditions, but they did this by updating the music’s settings and bolstering its stories and mythology. No Roses is one of Collins’s greatest achievements, a collection of deep, dark folk songs performed with a shape-shifting collective of musicians, from folk friends like Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span, and Richard Thompson of Fairport Convention, to free jazz musician Lol Coxhill. The album is full of devastating performances, and the group plays beautifully, as though floating past Collins on clouds of spirit. The album’s centrepiece, the filmic, episodic ballad “Murder of Maria Marten”, is as dramatic as it is moving, a torched lament.