"There are too many downtempo, dirge-y songs and it all gets a bit stodgy after a while."

@Rigby - that's how I feel too. On paper, I ought to love Lankum because I listen to a lot of so-called 'experimental' music and I love folk music. But in practice I find it a little one-dimensional - it just doesn't do it for me.

I think understatement suits traditional music and I feel a lot of 'experimental' folk over-eggs the pudding. The previous wave of idiosyncratic folkies - Mary Hampton, Cath & Phil Tyler, Alasdair Roberts - are much more my thing.

Listening to May Bradley sing unaccompanied songs still sounds to me much more powerful and strikingly 'other' than any 'experimental' drone folk does. For me, making folk that sounds like PJ Harvey, Radiohead or Nick Cave is a step towards the mainstream, rather than away from it.