Sanders & Savage. No longer just one of our best vocal duos, are they now our best?

Release Date: 20th September 2024

Label: Sungrazing Records

Format: CD / digital

If you are still unaware of this estimable duo, firstly, I don’t know where you have been, but, thinking that through, maybe you have picked the exactly the right moment to catch up. So, if you read this and do not pass ‘Go’, you deserve everything you won’t be getting, and a spell in jail is arguably what your ears may need. We, of course, love ’em, live and on record, but, regardless the superlatives before, never have they previously demonstrated quite so well the why. So, then, simple synopsis, two singers, two guitars, two traditions. But, it is all a bit more nuanced than that.

rose & cactus

Hannah Sanders has one of those voices, the sort that make you stop, sit up and take stock. A sublimely English instrument, it has a purity and clarity across the register. As happy with a whisper as a scream, if the latter seldom required. Savage doesn’t, his voice an earthier tool, encrusted with a workmanlike efficiency that hews away at the forefront of modern songmanship. She brings the English rose, he the American(a) cactus, despite hailing from the South-East of this country, their partnership a bridge that brings together the twain of the genres, with no clunky switch, as the one becomes the other.

Ironically, it was Sanders who spent several years in the US ahead of starting off her, initially, solo career here, back home. Each play an array of stringed instruments, including those two guitars through to, notably, dobro and dulcimer. And, this time, spread across the album are a number of additional artists, a band, even. Interested?

spectral sustains

Border Widow’s Lament beckons in with some spectral sustains and the barest hint of a double bass, from Jon Thorne. Savage’s dobro and a guitar make for a delicate bed and in swoops Sander’s vocal, for this traditional song. The overall effect is of a moonlight shimmer, a night-time lament. Her vocals are perfect, the setting sublime. Savage then takes the lead, his voice a warm buzzsaw, tempered then by Sanders’ harmony. This is Castles And Old Kings, a song by Northumbrian slide guitar maestro, Johnny Dickinson, who died in 2019, and to whom the album is dedicated. It is with dobro that Savage evokes the feel of the original, if the arrangement entirely their own. It is quietly gorgeous, benefiting from the layers of instrumentation. I note Savage claims rights to lap steel in amongst the array of other strings.

First Footing is one of their own compositions, and maintains the spectral aura present thus far, with some electric guitar giving lustre to the slow plucked notes. Sanders soars, and as Evan Carson’s drums come tripping in, there is almost a Kate Bush ethereality to the whole. (And, if not Bush, certainly of Betsy Cook, erstwhile Linda Thompson collaborator: check out her The Girl Who Ate Herself (1982).) An organ hovers, Pete Eaglefield, for further ballast, abetted by some synths from Ed Cook,and the project has suddenly leapt a few storeys.

reeking of history

Another of theirs, The Youngest Sailor,is a gentler affair, Thorne’s bass a reassuring metronome. It reeks of a history, both as song and story, so well have they channeled their knowledge of the tradition. Their voices, here and together, drop a hint of Gay and Terry Woods, with Savage now also taking over at the drumkit. A ghostly chorus add their voices: Jess Morgan, Jade Rhiannon, Findlay Napier, Gillian Frame,Liz Simmons and David Bentley, the mix somehow also finding room to include the mandolin of Flynn Cohen. With the production coming also from Savage, his degree in sound engineering has clearly been put to good use.

It takes being either foolhardy or very very good to dare reprise Sandy Denny’s take on Richard Farina’s Quiet Joys Of Brotherhood. Interestingly, whilst having the goods to reproduce that stripped back version, the duo here elect to garland her pindrop vocals in a woozy soundwash, giving a fresh slant on the beauty of the traditional air that carries the lyric. As dobro and percussion join, backbeat steady and cymbal crashes aplenty, it builds into quite the epic. And the vocal performance is anything but foolhardy, defaulting to the alternative option effortlessly.

amping up the husky

Savage amps up the husky for Save My Life, another of their own. Back again to core duo, give or take an overdub or two, it is Sanders on the electric guitar here. However strong the two songs that precede it undoubtedly are, this simple, yet far from simple, love song eclipses both. Sticking with a sparser arrangement, comes the call and response of Say Darlin’ Say, which, once it gears up, reveals itself to be also what we might know an augmented Hush Little Baby/Mockingbird. Thorne’s bass twangs gloriously and the choir are back, adding the odd whoop, if sufficiently sotto voce to forgive. A harmonica wails convincingly, that the responsibility also of Morgan, dueling buoyantly with Cohen’s mandolin. Way more upbeat than anything else here, before or after, it provides a respite to any fraying emotions wrought thus far.

job done

Job done, the mood returns to the duo’s comfort zone of a righteous and inevitable foreboding. Another original, The Lilac Bloom, uses the imagery of flowers to create a mood of rugged acceptance, with the drums, back in Carson’s control, decisively incisive. This is then followed by something a little different, if not unique, pairing Savage’s dobro with Sanders’ dulcimer for an instrumental, The Lavender’s Ready. How do they blend? Bloody brilliantly. So used to dobro in a bluegrass setting, played wild and free, one forgets quite how well the instrument can sing, and, boy, can Savage eke that voice out of it, as the more glacial dulcimer flickers alongside.

Closer, Marbletown, is an arrangement of the traditional Every Night When The Sun Goes In, with a sensitive and subdued rhythm track. This is mainly a showcase for each their vocals, as they trade verses. Lest you had forgotten, during the instrumental ahead of this, this cements any lacking realisation they have indisputable individual talents, the strength being the marriage of her, remember, rose with his cactus. But it’s a gentle cactus, that won’t destroy your fingers, one with a bloom of it’s own. A glorious record with, potentially, the best vocal performance of the year.

Dare to disagree? My case for the defence, The Youngest Sailor:

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