Box&Fir - Fairest Isles

Box&Fir, Fairest Isles, St. Mary's, Fratton, Nov 17th

Rogers Covey-Crump was a part of the Hilliard Ensemble and Gothic Voices, among many other things. The Gothic Voices album, The Castle of Fair Welcome, was one of the first 'early music' albums I bought and it is one of the select group of records that was updated to CD from LP, so good that I paid for it twice.
This programme of songs and music from around 1800 is closer to our time but still quaint. The light tenor voice is augmented by Ian Gammie's gentle guitar and the decorative flute of Jenny Thomas in songs of both forlorn and requited love, mourning and carpe diem. Towards the end, Rogers is revealed as percussionist when he brings out a tambourine but most of the action is in the subtle shading and nuances of the pacific.
Sometimes in Welsh, these are traditional folk tunes and similar, Tommy Moore being a composer of some of them including the optimistic When Time who steals our years away that Box&Fir ended with. 
In Cadair Idris,
It's good to have song, it's good to have money,
But I can't love anything without her

while with Ar Hyd y Nos I realized my Welsh was better than I thought and I immediately translated it as All Through the Night as Jenny played variations on the familiar theme.
So, this was the pop music of Beethoven's time, songs that Keats might have known, Romanticism of a tender disposition before it got out of hand. It was a welcome Sunday afternoon pleasure.
Once, some 45 years ago, a friend of a friend said my Steeleye Span LP was refreshing after all his tearaway Ten Years After. In the same way, Box&Fir are the closest thing to sparkling water in music that I've heard for quite some time.