Please note this is an old page and Fly Global Music has now moved. Please follow this link and search for the entry in the new site.

To sum up for the uninitiated, expect traditional dance tunes and ballads with a big band funk brass feel (think The Dirty Dozen Brass band), sousaphones, flugelhorns set alongside fiddles driving drums and melodeon, yet an approach to the tunes that manages improbably and amazingly to stick to its folk sensibilities.

Burlesque has almost as many gems as there are tracks, each one trying to outdo the others in energy and creativity. ‘Flash Company’ is about as theatrical as it gets, starting out with weaving, drunken splutterings and ending as a rousing pub number and ‘The Outlandish Knight’, which uses Martin Carthy’s excellent melody is sublime, building atmospherically as the action unfolds.

Of the best of the best is amusing ‘London Town’ in which a young man takes out a girl, has his wicked way with her in a seedy hotel, robs her and leaves her locked in a hotel room (presumably without paying the bill - the cad). The funk-sliding-into-disco side comes through strongest in ‘Fire Marengo’, which has more kick even than Napoleon’s trusted horse, after whom the song was written and the ballad ‘Death and the Lady’ takes an unexpected musical twist just as things start to calm down.

The detail in the liner notes is phenomenal, showing real pains have been gone to to create the album, and the slight geekiness of the detail belies the pure cool that is the music. If you’re still unsure as whether to go out and get this, just go and do it, you won’t regret it.

Burlesque is launched on 2 October.