Old Magick is the new album by Steven James Adams, former songwriter/singer/guitarist from the critically acclaimed Broken Family Band. Old Magick is proof that Adams’ gift for marrying exceptional lyrics with inescapable earworms is very much intact.

Recorded at The Premises in Hackney with producer Dan Michaelson at the helm, Old Magick is an intimate and absorbing record. With Michaelson also adding guitar and piano – lending his distinctive, pared-down style to many of the songs – and drums from Daniel Fordham (The Drink), the recording process was consciously self-contained. ‘We worked in a bubble,’ says Adams, ‘and all I wanted was to make a record that sounded like him recording me.’

While the album title hints at Adams’s interest in the dark arts, the lyrical content of Old Magick covers a lot of ground. Togetherness is a song about modern British racism, set to a disarmingly pretty tune. The upbeat Kings of The Back of The Bus sees Adams contrasts the posturing of youth with the choices we make as we get older (‘Now it’s just massage music’.) Elsewhere, desperation is in the air, as the deluded protagonist of Ideas tries in vain to rescue a relationship gone wrong, a theme echoed by French Drop, an old conjuring term for a trick in which an object appears to disappear without having gone anywhere. The bad, sad trip of Sea of Words pilfers the phrase ‘the news from nowhere’ from William Morris, former resident of Walthamstow, Adams’ adopted home, while The Golden Bough is ‘a rock ‘n roll song about neuroscience and the “spiritual” choices people make in Western culture’.

Adams takes Old Magick on the road in the UK this March. His shows are wonderful to behold: funny, intimate and wildly unpredictable. According to a recent Guardian article ‘you’d struggle to find a British songwriter of the last 15 years who’s had such consistently good reviews’. A genuine entertainer, a truly gifted songwriter, and perhaps the closest thing there is to a British Bill Callahan, Adams has produced a high watermark of a record in Old Magick, proof that his reputation is deserved.

Support comes from Aron Harper-Robinson. The passionate, deeply felt themes of his music have the power to connect everyone in a room whether it is large venues or smoky backstreet nightclubs. The ability to give expression to our deep-rooted fears and passions has been developed over the many years spent travelling through England, Europe then the hinterlands and vast cities of Canada and America. The journey resulted in the release of his first EP, the critically acclaimed Back to the Great Lakes. This won a following that includes such notable talents as Damon Gough and John Bramwell. Tiring of city life Aron his wife and their young son returned to their roots and now make their home in the wilds of West Yorkshire. The rivers, hills and moors with their vast horizons provide fresh inspiration for this soulful artist. The natural and powerful rhythms found in a simpler life are imbued in the moving compositions of Arons next EP entitled We’re All Just Part Of Something, And It Hasn’t Happened Yet – available 21 March 2016.