A spellbinding return from British folk’s fearless innovator, fusing myth, nature, and modernity in a haunting sonic landscape.

Since her 2007 debut Wild and Undaunted, Lisa Knapp has stood out as one of the most adventurous voices in British folk. With her bold, expressive vocals and a fearless approach to storytelling, she’s consistently pushed the genre’s boundaries. On Hinterland, her long-awaited follow-up, she reunites with producer and partner Gerry Diver—now a credited co-creator—for a record that is as immersive and imaginative as anything she’s done. From the start, Hinterland brims with invention. Hawk & Crow flutters in with Knapp’s layered avian voices atop a fractured, tumbling rhythm, evoking an enchanted Tom Waits in the woods. Then, in a jarring shift, Train Song grounds us in the present with a rolling list of suburban detritus, turning the everyday into poetic cadence. Star Carr, meanwhile, transports us back to ancient Yorkshire, evoking a time when ritual and nature blurred—its references to red deer headdresses conjure images of Mesolithic ceremonies and wild, ecstatic gatherings.

Traditional ballads are given fresh, eerie life. Knapp delivers I Must Away Love with delicate ache, Long Lankin with quiet menace, and The Lass of Aughrim with devastating vulnerability. Diver’s instrumentation—fiddle, drones, ambient textures—is dark, rich, and unafraid of dissonance, perfectly complementing Knapp’s unpolished yet captivating delivery. Her voice can be ethereal one moment and primal the next, spilling yelps and growls that reveal the full emotional spectrum of these songs.

Hinterland doesn’t just reinterpret folk—it lives within it, breathing strange, modern life into its old bones. This is folk music at its most raw, reverent, and radical.