After the Albion Christmas Band tour was cancelled due to the current pandemic, it seemed almost inevitable that Ashley would head to his home studio and start writing and recording. This led to him teaming up with Mills and Dunlop to write and record the material for A Midwinter Miscellany.

The album is a collection of festive tracks, some old, with new arrangements written by those involved and some new, written specifically for this lockdown project. Rather than drawing from the wellspring of folk music for the older material they have turned to literature, writing perfect arrangements to poems from Christopher Smart, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, G. K. Chesterton and even Kenneth Grahame’s Animal Carol from Wind in the Willows. Each arrangement has been impeccably thought through and each works to perfection. One could be forgiven for thinking the music and lyrics were written together, such is their overall power.

Of their own material, each adds something of themselves to the mix, but ultimately it feels so very unified, each musician seems to understand the premise of the album in the same way and they have created something that gels so beautifully. Becky’s songs are remarkable, she has such an achingly beautiful voice, and one can almost imagine Nick Drake singing "Sweet November", which be outdone, Blair Dunlop adds his soulful voice to the rather lovely ballad "Her Name Was Mary", written in conjunction with Hutchings, this one will be a permanent fixture in my own festive playlists alongside several tracks from this album. I am not usually a big Christmas music fan, it takes something really special to make my Christmas playlist, however, I would suggest all of this album is worthy of inclusion. Just to add an extra little sparkle, Judy Dunlop recites William Makepeace Thackeray’s Mahogany Tree, set to music. The inclusion of which gives the whole package an even greater sense of a cosy family Christmas, if that is at all possible. On a separate note, I think it worth mentioning that Blair Dunlop acted as producer on this album and he really does a great job of uniting the material and he comes up with a lovely warm, rich sound that works perfectly for the material.

Overall this is a beautiful album, featuring some stellar performances from Becky Mills and Blair Dunlop with the guiding presence of Ashley Hutchings never far away. What it has done for me is to introduce these two wonderful singer/ songwriters to me and now I am about to go digging into their own back catalogues.