Smoke Fairies: Blood Speaks – review

By the time Jessica Davies and Katherine Blamire received the publicity boost of a Jack White endorsement in 2009, they'd already been refining their sound together for a decade, hence the tight parameters of their 2010 debut – a vintage folk and blues furrow ploughed rather well. They speak of having broadened their influences since then but Blood Speaks deals in familiar virtues: subtle, minor key laments on which their voices twine elegantly around brooding guitars. The mood of gathering gloom occasionally drifts rather close to torpor, but Feel It Coming Near and the sublime Awake usher the darkness in beautifully.