Josienne Clarke & Ben Walker release their debut album for Rough Trade, ‘Overnight’. The album, which is self-produced, follows their Rough Trade debut, the ‘Through The Clouds’ EP, which was released earlier this year.

‘Overnight’ is their most ambitious record to date, focusing on Clarke’s extraordinary voice and lyrics and Walker’s prodigious guitar playing and arranging; the album features panoramic orchestration by an eclectic core of acclaimed musicians, including strings, horns, piano, double bass and drums. The twelve songs – ten originals and two covers, recorded almost entirely live at Rockfield Studios in Wales – serve as a snapshot of the endless cycle of night into day and back again, morning light, into dusk, into black midnight, into greying dawn and on, and on.

The album’s lilting ‘The Waning Crescent’ is almost an answer in ballad form to the portrayal of the moon in traditional and popular music as a soothing, confessional, companion. Coming at the darkest and stillest point in the album, the song – like the moon – brings a reassuring lightness. Clarke explains, “I started to think about if I was the moon, what I might think and feel, and what the moon might sing back,” adding, “I’ve given it a slightly whiny, self-pitying quality because it’s whimsical and a bit funny.” One of the poppier songs on the album, the sound of ‘The Waning Crescent’ is meant to fit the song’s subject matter. “We’ve done vignettes before where we’ve taken on a musical genre because that’s what fits the concept of the song. On this one, we’ve used the ‘50s and ‘60s space-race era pop sound to deliberately compound the moon theme,” says Josienne.

Other highlights include the stunning country / soul ballad ‘Something Familiar’ and their marvellous take on Gillian Welch’s ‘Dark Turn Of Mind’, the eerie folk of ‘Dawn Of The Dark’ and ‘The Light Of His Lamp’ and the traditional-leaning ‘Sweet The Sorrow’ and ‘Weep You No More Sad Fountains’, the latter a traditional English ballad set to song.

Though Clarke and Walker’s previous work is very much steeped in the the folk tradition – the two in fact won the BBC Folk Award for Best Duo in 2015 – ‘Overnight’ draws just as much inspiration from more-straightforward 1970s AM radio rock like Fleetwood Mac or Neil Young as they do from folkrockers like Fairport Convention or Joni Mitchell.