The cream of Shirley Collins, by Jim Wirth.

THE VISIONARY EPIC

Shirley & Dolly Collins

★★★★★

(HARVEST, 1969)

The side of individual songs – including Robin Williamson’s absurdist jewel God Dog – gets overlooked due to the overwhelming side-long “song story” which tracks how war memorials came to replace maypoles as the focus of English village life. Lucy Broadwood via William Blake, Anthems In Eden catches Shirley in stunning voice, with Dolly’s hymnlike arrangements, realised by the Early Music Consort, a radical addition to the tradition.

THE FOLK ROCK FORAY Shirley Collins And The Albion Country Band

★★★★

(PEGASUS, 1971)

Fairport Convention’s Liege And Lief defined British folk rock, but No Roses is its equal. Featuring Collins’s then husband Ashley Hutchings and a huge cast of heavy friends (Fairports, Watersons, Steeleye Spanners plus Nic Jones, Barry Dransfield and sax maniac Lol Coxhill) it contains some of Collins’s favourite performances – Banks Of The Bann, Just As The Tide Was A-Flowing – plus a stunningly bleak closer, Poor Murdered Woman. All killer, no filler.

THE VOICE RETURNS

Shirley Collins

★★★★

(DOMINO, 2016)

Recorded at home in Lewes (listen out for the birds in her garden), Lodestar was Collins’s first album in 38 years, but if her voice had dropped an octave, there was no let-up in her ability to dig into the heart of English folk song. Ian Kearey’s exceptional light-touch arrangements and assistance from trad-arr experimentalists Cylobe help max out the elemental drama of Awake Awake, Cruel Lincoln and a remade Death And The Lady.