Article #49770

(Broadside Hacks)
Named after a 19th-century relative, this sprawling group foreground folk’s rough edges, but are best in the emotional, less showy moments

Brown Wimpenny arrive with a name suggesting the softness of a twee indie band, before you discover it belonged to a fourth great-uncle of banjo player Seth Lockwood, who emigrated from a West Yorkshire farm to the 19th-century US. Then you hear the exploratory, hour-long debut album of this sprawling young collective, formed in Sunday sessions in Lockwood’s Manchester living room. A band happy to show their music’s muddy roots, these expansive eight tracks nonetheless pulse with ambition.

The album begins with a high-reaching medley, building from an atmospheric fiddle-led instrumental over a low cello drone. Dusty live production makes a feature of the music’s cracks and creaks, but when Lockwood’s athletic banjo takes the lead, it carries the rest of the group with arresting dynamism.