With unseemly speed Seth Lakeman has gone from his brother's kitchen studio to a major label - all since his second solo album Kitty Jay's nomination for the 2005 Mercury Music Prize. The Dartmoor indie-folk star, still the right side of 30, has been scooped up by the same people responsible for KT Tunstall's meteoric rise from busker to doyenne of the safe pop-folk world.
Reasonably enough, Relentless (a bit of Virgin, itself a chunk of EMI) can't wait for a new album. Even at Seth Lakeman's prodigous work rate there'd still be months between his last release, Freedom Fields, and any new material. Instead they're putting out a re-recorded version of Lady Of The Sea, a prime cut of Freedom Fields, with a video and a packshot that suggests Robbie Williams as painted by Turner.
This is the point where treasurers of Seth's homespun, kitchen sink studio approach to music must not lose belief. He has the potential to be huge and, if EMI can help him fulfil that potential, so much the good. There's an underlying hint of tearfully waving a favoured son away to his first day at school about it all, but the rerecorded single merely suggests Seth knows how to spend the extra pots of money wisely. Last year the recognition, this year the reward?
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