Under One Sky – The Songs EP

Under One Sky has quite the interesting back story - sort of an art project via a Mission Impossible Brief via The Reindeer Section via a "why can't the English and Scottish be friends" sort of mentality.Commissioned jointly by the PRS Foundation, the Scottish Arts Council and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Under One Sky was designed to be a mish-mash of genres featuring the talents of some of England's and Scotland's best musicians, under the watchful eye and engineering of John McCusker.What the collective produced, though, is five pretty similar folky sounding songs with a different vocalist on each. Perhaps not quite the genre-bending, experimental collaboration that could've emerged from such a project, but a solid EP that hangs together well. Opener 'Hush a Bye' begins like a minuet or waltz straight out of Austen times with a heavy three beats a bar and a cordial acoustic guitar, but the accompanying deep Johnny Cash-esque vocals help to ground it more in this century.Perhaps more accessible than 'S Tusa Thilleas', sang entirely in Gaelic, is Roddy Woomble's guest turn on 'Lavender Hill', a wistful, bittersweet number that instantly transports you to a craggy mountain side in Scotland, with Woomble's voice suited perfectly to this unpretentious, traditional-feel track. This is also the most comfortable sounding track, undoubtedly because Woomble and McCusker have already made an album together.Graham Coxon guests on 'All Has Gone', but sadly there's little of his spikiness puncturing the mellow guitar shuffle, and whilst the lilting strings are beautiful, Coxon's appearance mainly goes unnoticed.This is a collection of beautiful Scottish folk tracks, each given a unique spin by the guest musicians and vocalists. In terms of a collective though, and encompassing various sounds and genres, it falls short. 65%