Skilled banjo player – and maker! – embracing the weirdness of British folk traditions was always likely to be an alternative folk musician. Until recently, her parents were members of the band Sproatly Smith, at the centre of Herefordshire’s ‘Weirdshire’ folk scene; they’re also the two guests joining Elswyth on her new album, . “It’s not exactly a standard narrative,” she smiles.
“My parents aren’t old folkies who sang in folk clubs while I was young. We’re both approaching folk from a slightly oblique angle and doing something a bit strange with it. But it does mean that there is a connection there to the image of traditional song being something inter-generational.
” Elswyth started out making drone-based guitar improvisations as a teenager but stopped performing for several years due to full-time commitment to a doctorate in anthropology at Sussex University. “I was playing banjo through that time,” she says, “but just in my room, on my own.” When she returned to music with focused intent, the folk tradition was core to her interests, but with an experimental edge she’d gleaned from listening to ‘free folk’ artists like and .
Much of what Elswyth does collapses dichotomies in a similar way. Her music often accrues around a drone, or something gently avant-garde, that still somehow grounds the melody. The DIY ethos is fundamental – on 2021’s solo debut , you could literally hear Elswyth building her own instrument.
When she plays.