Shirley Collins - Heart's Ease: A lovingly warm document of a life lived through folk

For almost four decades, Shirley Collins, an essential voice in the English folk revival of the Sixties and Seventies, fell silent. Newly stricken with dysphonia, her singing voice vanished.

But in 2016, she returned with the miraculous Lodestar, her first new album in 38 years. Now, the reinvigorated octogenarian has delivered again. It’s a scholarly album — many of the tracks are interpretations of songs passed down through the generations, some dating back hundreds of years — but there’s no sterile academia here. Heart’s Ease is disarming in its warmth, with an emanating sense that this music really is Collins’ lifeblood.

Her aged voice, which carries a gentle Sussex accent, has previously been called “plain”, but that simplicity is deceptive. On Barbara Allen, amid a droning hurdy-gurdy, she is wistful and woeful, romantic and remorseful as she tells the story of doomed lovers. Her tracklist has hidden layers, too — one song was written by an ex-husband, another by her late nephew, both reminders of how her life and music became interwoven.

Collins is a living legacy, an embodiment of enduring folk tradition. “Through all eternity, I’ll sing on,” she promises on Wondrous Love. I have no doubt she will.