Cruel River is reviewed in today's Torygraph. Down the bottom of the reviews, under "folk".

Don't expect cream teas in Knightley's West Country

The song I really like on it is Transported, the one about the sheep-rustlers. Tall Ship Story and Cruel River itself are very good Knightley-originals too. His cover of Mark Knopfler's Romeo & Juliet is pretty excellent too.

I have to say that Cruel River is suffering in my comparative listening against Richard Shindell's South of Delia, but then Richard has cheated and got Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Woody Guthrie to write the songs for him. Not that Richard himself isn't a great songwriter too, just that South of Delia is set up as a covers CD. Then I made it really hard for myself and listened again to the forty two year old The Paul Simon Songbook, which won over both!