Album review: Johnny Flynn, Country Mile (Transgressive)

It may open with expansive electric guitar and crashing drums, and the singer may protest he isn’t really “folk”, but Country Mile can’t help but confirm Flynn’s spot in the more interesting corner of the Mumfording folk-pop scene.

Maybe it’s the warbling about the countryside, the hippyish philosophising: “My soul is in the trees …” Maybe it’s his gorgeous voice: warm, mossy, with that trad-sounding, back-of-the-throat quaver.

There’s less barn-floor stomp than on previous albums, but Country Mile is still rousing, with trumpet, fiddle and much – occasionally dicey – harmonising. Also a Shakespearean actor, Flynn’s language and cadence can be quaintly archaic; his wandering-minstrel lyrics poetic, and apple-sweet.