June Tabor with Martin Simpson - A Cut Above (1980)

Anyone who has heard June Tabor sing isn’t apt to forget the experience. Her voice is one of the few genuinely unique vehicles of the folk world: haunting, powerful, and with a deep feeling for the song, it has won praise and admiration beyond the confines of folk per se. While many of her contemporaries generate excitement for daring to be more «pop» in their repertoire and styling, Tabor instead uses understated drama and passion, a sometimes startling difference that secures her place as one of the most important vocalists to emerge in any musical genre. (from a fan site)

What links her to Britain’s past traditions are the chilling and emotional qualities of her voice. What links her to the British present is her fine taste in material, arrangements, and backing musicians, along with a willingness to try different things and interpret work by contemporary songwriters. […] This album was originally released on the Topic label in 1980, when June Tabor was just coming into her own as a solo artist. She had made two albums with Maddy Prior (of Steeleye Span) in the 1970s, both of which were fairly light-hearted collections of English folk songs. On A Cut Above, she is teamed up with guitarist Martin Simpson and begins to show the darker colours that would typify her subsequent work. «Admiral Benbow» (a gorgeous sea song with a lovely choral tag at the end) and the cheerfully despairing «Flash Company» are light enough, but her hair-raising a cappella performance of «Number Two Top Seam», a song about a coal mine explosion, shows her at her best – stark, chilling and beautiful. She also manages to cut Linda Thompson with her rendition of «Strange Affair», possibly the saddest and most beautiful of all the sad and beautiful songs written by Linda’s ex-husband Richard. Martin Simpson, who is the very soul of taste throughout this album, mars «Strange Affair» with an ill-advised slide guitar solo, but it’s the only mistake anyone makes on this album. (AllMusicGuide)

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