OYSTERBAND: "Holy Bandits" (Cooking Vinyl)

ONE OF the most vital forces at work in the contemporary British roots scene, Oysterband are many things; political polemicists, good time merchants, and one of the best live bands on the planet.

More than most they have successfully fused the dreaded folk-rock hybrid into something approaching a complete whole, without compromising themselves or either genre. Holy Bandits continues refining the process begun by Deserters, their last album, but the presence on board of Levellers producer Al Seolt means that there is a slightly more commercial sheen than heretofore.

There's ample evidence of Oysterband's commercial potential in the firepower of songs like 'The Road to Santiago', naughty bits like 'When I'm Up I Can't Get Down', the respectful nod to tradition of 'The Rambling Irishman' and the searing indictment of modern society of 'A Fire Is Burning'. Hold all this together with a powerful dynamic playing that belongs on occasion to an extra-terrestrial dimension, and there's a ready made recipe for one of the year's finest albums.

Holy Bandits punched, strutted and jaywalked itself into my affections from the very first rotation, and that, I can assure you, doesn't happen too often these days.

A very dangerous album. Listen well, and repeatedly.

• Oliver P. Sweeney