Shirley Collins' Octogenarian Folk Trilogy

Shirley Collins was a cornerstone of the English folk revival, releasing twenty something albums, travelling, and cataloguing traditional tunes with Alan Lomax between the 1950s and the 1970s. Then, after a tide of personal misfortune, she lost her voice. She sustained herself working clerical jobs until her pension came through, at which point she moved back to her native Sussex and reconnected with music. After a 38 year gap between albums, 2016’s Lodestar cemented her place as one of the genre’s most significant voices. Now her third – and possibly final – album in her era as an “octogenarian folk singer”, Archangel Hill, is released, featuring traditional songs as well as a handful of originals.