“With a glo­ri­ous his­tory stretch­ing back over twenty years, The Albion Band has been a show­case for some of the finest folk musi­cians in the land. Past mem­bers include Phil Beer, Mar­tin Carthy, Shirley Collins, John Kirk­patrick, Chris Leslie, Cathy Lesurf, Dave Mat­tacks, Julie Matthews, Simon Nicol, Ric Sanders, John Tams, Richard Thomp­son and Chris While. The cur­rent line-up fol­lows in this fine tra­di­tion, pro­vid­ing a plat­form for five of the most tal­ented and cre­ative musi­cians in Britain today. The Albion Band’s musi­cal appeal crosses all boundaries.”

‘Uncut’ Mag­a­zine, August 98 issue.
Happy Acci­dent.
Folk-rock stal­wart does it again. Ash­ley ”Tyger” Hutch­ings has been a main­stay of the Eng­lish folk scene since the days of Fair­port Con­ven­tion and Steel­eye Span. Although he left Fair­port because he only wanted to play tra­di­tional mate­r­ial, in recent years he has become a fine song­writer. His umpteenth album with the ever chang­ing Albion Band con­sists of mostly his own mature com­po­si­tions played in a sprightly folk-rock fash­ion, the inter­play of Joe Broughton’s vio­lin and Ken Nicol’s elec­tric gui­tar at times recall­ing the clas­sic Swarbrick-Thompson team­ing of Liege And Lief fame.
Nigel Williamson

Folk Roots July 98
Happy Acci­dent HTD HTDCD82
Com­ing amidst a cas­cade of related prod­uct, the debut of a replugged Albion is some­thing to smile about. Even through the most acoustic of phases Ash­ley Hutch­ings couldn’t hide that he’s a rocker, his side projects rev­el­ling in the fact. Recon­nec­tion, in truth, was never a mat­ter of if — only when. The cur­rent Albion is dif­fer­ent enough from any­thing that’s gone before to carry the slip­stream, and The Guv’nor’s prob­a­bly got a quiet smirk of sat­is­fac­tion on his face at his choice of per­son­nel. Super­fi­cially the near­est com­par­i­son is the ‘1990’ incar­na­tion, though Ken Nicol’s gui­tar work is chunky rock’n’roll while Neil Mar­shall anchors every­thing with splen­did diverse­ness of touch. Young gun Joe Broughton’s the bright spark, turn­ing in rag­time, jazz reel­ing and Swar­brick­ian touches. Both recent vocal­ists, Kel­lie While and Gillie Nicholls, ghost var­i­ous tracks. While out­stand­ing on ‘Com­ing Home to Me’, Nicholls is the more obvi­ously Eng­lish. Hutch­ings, writ­ing more — espe­cially with Ken Nicol — seems con­tent to deal out his mis­sion state­ment on ‘Wings’, a sum­ma­tion of thirty odd years devoted to fur­ther­ing the quest for an intrin­sic rock form. For now what’s hap­pen­ing is all right, and it looks likely that given no hic­cups ahead there’s lots more meat on the bone.
Simon Jones

Mojo Mag­a­zine
Road Movies
In between all the off-shoots, side projects and never-ending com­pi­la­tions, Ash­ley Hutch­ings’ Albion Band can be depended on to release, at the very least, an album a year. But every so often an Albions record comes along that deserves to soar above all the back cat­a­logue jostling and punter con­fu­sion, and this is one such. For a start, the line-up is sen­sa­tional: vocalist/guitarist Ken Nicol’s cap doffs refresh­ingly towards lost hero Nic Jones as to folk-rock bench­mark Richard Thomp­son, while fiddler/keyboardist Joe Broughton will thrill and astound those who yearn for the sound of Dave Swar­brick in a mod­ern con­text. True, there are echoes of ‘Full House-era’ Fair­port instru­men­tally (and, oddly, of ‘War Child-era’ Jethro Tull in open­ing trackPress Gang), but this is a con­fi­dent, crisp and even funky album for today with power, pathos and just a lit­tle light relief in per­fect blend
Colin Harper