Lost Measures finds Leveret at the top of the tree, where they belong.

Release Date : 26th September 2025

Label : Self-Released

Format : CD / Digital (Bandcamp)

SO DARN JOLLY

Is it me or are Leveret having fun? Don’t get me wrong, over their decade and counting of existence, they have never been less than impressive and inspiring, but, this time around, they just sound so darn jolly. This set of tunes positively gambols out of the speakers, a reeling riot of reels and polkas, begging for couples around the room, facing anti-clockwise. I may be fancying this, but I wonder if it has anything to do with them playing ceilidhs? OK, this may have happened only the once, at Shrewsbury, in 2023, citation needed, but, if loose is never a word that might describe the complex inter-digitations of Mssrs. Cutting, Harbron and Sweeney, they certainly sound more relaxed.

With some of their own compositions liberally sprinkled into the researched archive material, all meticulously sourced, this follows their traditional pattern of exploring each tune on the hoof. Famously never rehearsing, where rehearsal is the repetition of a set pattern, instead they trust each other sufficient to follow the leads they in turn discover, the core structure imprinted, the journey never. A jam band, then, if that isn’t too great a leap of connectivity.

THE IMMENSE PLEASURE OF NORMAL SERVICE

It all kicks off with Old Abigail’s Delight, from Playford’s Dancing Master, the shazam of 1651, wherein all extant dances of the day were documented. Starting with an elongated box background drone from Harbron’s concertina, the fiddle of Sam Sweeney bounds into melody, closely tailed by Cutting’s melodeon, the two chasing each other around the intricacies offered. Is it called counterpoint when they weave the same melody around each other? Well, there’s plenty of that, the pleasure given by normal service being resumed immense, At some stage there’s a seamless segue into a more recent tune, William Stukeley’s Hornpipe, from Dr Andy Letcher, the erstwhile Telling The Bees frontman and expert in psychedelics, ecology, animism and paganism, who is worth looking up in his own right.

Chalandeix is one of those medieval melodies that sound as if they could be played in a church, on a suitably wheezy organ. With a whiff of bal about it, it is unmistakably French in feel, the surprise coming that it was actually written in 2022, by Cutting. The play is so orchestral as to belie there are but three pairs of hands involved. Sweeney then fires off a pair of jigs, Hemp Dressers and Wakefield Hunt, each aged dances this inveterate tunehunter has unearthed. This is one I can imagine easily appealing to those fleet of foot and happy to hoof across a festival dance tent floor.

A FEW TWEAKS

When Leveret say a tune is an “amalgamation of a couple of versions, with a few tweaks and a new ending“, it all sounds so simple. I suspect the reality a little different, especially when, for any melody more than a couple of centuries old, there are likely to be a huge abundance of varied hand-me-down variations. And when each the two constituent parts of The Captain’s Lady/Master Tommy’s Married were brought to the table by different members, this underlines the scholarship present, to arrange them into a single flowing theme. As ever, the sleeve notes add further snippets of fascination to the brew.

Another blend of the ancient and modern comes as Trip To Tewkesbury (1833) gets paired with Cutting’s own Hunger Hill. Another spritely air, the image of lords a’leaping is hard to dispel, let alone the attendant ladies dancing. The intricacies of who plays what remains as elusive as only Leveret can make it seem. You’d think the contrasting instrumental timbres would make it easy, but I dare you to be certain. The pair of minuets that follow, Untitled and A French Minuet get prefaced by the classic description, again from the sleeve notes, that the first had been, by Sweeney, “a dressing room discovery in Basingstoke“. So that’s what these rock’n’rollers get up to, pre-gig! Be that as it may, these are, sonically, the most intricate sounding concoctions here.

TEASING TOUCHES

Dutch Skipper, as well as educating me as to the derivation of the word, is an example of slow, the first to be offered thus far, a maudlin air retrieved by Harbron. Possibly my fantasy, it feels the soundtrack to old black and white footage of an old salt, looking wistfully out to sea. Cutting and Sweeney tease equivalently mournful tones out their instruments, which allows Harbron to attach the Dr Phibes of the lower notes.

Rest over, back on yer feet, if a gentler set of steps, for Captain Driver’s Delight. Whether this is the same Captain mentioned earlier seems unlikely, but it comes on like a presentation piece solo dance to entertain, more so as it blurs into Harbron’s There And Back Again. Back then to the village church for Evening Hymn, Tallis by way of Clare, for those to whom the names matter. Led off by Harbron’s concertina, Cutting’s melodeon then joins, before Sweeney adds some top notes on what, here at least, sounds more violin than fiddle. Utterly glorious and I could stand even some choral evensong, were introduced in this way.

MAGIC

Once A Night could refer to anything, but there is no supporting information for the curious. Nonetheless, combined with Buckland Down, the two tunes make for a gradual lift from the solemnity of the track before. There is a sort of nostalgic and sentimental feel to the second part that I find enormously appealing. A silver band appears in your head , or did in mine, adding additional textures, which seems magic, as they are most definitely not present. (But it is a lovely thought; Leveret with brass!)

Ianthe, to close, is from the same collection that provided Dutch Skipper, which allows Harbron, as the detective, to add in his own Aphelion. Rather than doomed lovers from Greek mythology, one is a flower and the other isn’t; you are going to have to buy this to find quite what an aphelion actually is, unless you are the sort of clever clogs who might know. I didn’t but the two melodies sit snugly together, each tunes to sit with, for the head, rather than for the heels. Sweeney’s fiddle is as rich as warmed molasses and, together with the gentle squeezes of his cohorts, the sense of contentment is complete, even as a slight upping of pace arrives to usher in the close.

A HELL OF A TREAT IN STORE

Leveret remain squarely at the top of their game for this corking release, and possibly also at the top of the instrumental dance music tree. Recorded by Harbron at The Little Chapel, Rodborough, mixing and mastering comes via Neil Ferguson. If you haven’t yet discovered the joy such music can bring into your life, you have one hell of a treat in store.

Is there a tour, you ask? Of course there is!

In the absence of any of these new tunes being available, ever wondered how Leveret warm up and soundcheck?

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