Album review: Southern Tenant Folk Union, Hello Cold Goodbye Sun (Johnny Rock)

With Hello Cold Goodbye Sun, the Scottish folk group Southern Tenant Folk Union presents its most potent offering since 2010's excellent The New Farming Scene.

As with that album, darkness lurks behind the harmonies, banjos and fiddles. Economic meltdown and realpolitik cynicism are viewed with clear-eyed bitterness in "Crash" and "Men in Robes", but the most shockingly cheery song is "Days at the Seaside with Ice Cream", a jaunty domestic murder ballad from the viewpoint of kids accompanying mum in the car en route to dumping daddy's body in the sea.

Download: Goodbye Sun; Dark Passenger; Days at the Seaside with Ice Cream