Natalie Merchant has changed direction again. It's little more than two months since she toured Britain, backed by just acoustic guitars and a cello, reworking songs from her epic Leave Your Sleep album, on which she performed with well over a hundred musicians. Now the former 10,000 Maniacs singer was back with a versatile country band, and the result was magnificent. The new songs, written for her daughter, match her own sturdy melodies in an extraordinary variety of styles against lyrics by equally unexpected British and American poets. Ogden Nash's Adventures of Isabel was treated as a furious fiddle-and-banjo hoe-down; Nathalia Crane's The Janitor's Boy became a slinky jazz work-out.
Merchant broke away to revive old songs, from her own Break Your Heart to the Fairport Convention classic Crazy Man Michael, and ended by introducing the Irish band Lunasa (who appear on the album) for a glorious, flute and pipe-backed treated of Christina Rossetti's Crying, My Little One. In turn thoughtful, soulful and sensual, Merchant was on classic form.
The Cambridge festival has hit on an original formula by inviting an eclectic range of Americans, and on Saturday the lineup also included the rousing multi-instrumental trio Carolina Chocolate Drops, with their string band and jug band revivalism, and the stylish Pink Martini, proving to be unlikely folk favourites with their fusion of Latin, Schubert and multilingual easy listening.
It was also a good festival for the Scots and Canadians, thanks to the excellent Burns Unit, the new folk-rock-rap supergroup who sounded as impressive live as on their album Side Show, with Karine Polwart, Emma Pollock and King Creosote leading the stirring harmony vocals, and Glaswegian MC Soom T stomping through the folk/rap Send Them Kids to War. The English contingent was headed by the Unthanks, whose strings and brass at times overpowered Rachel and Becky's exquisite bleak vocals.
