After an 8-year gap (“hey, we were busy”), Oysterband’s 12th collection of new material (14th if you count their well-known collaborations with grande dame of folk June Tabor) displays undiminished creative energy from the senior-statesmen folk-rockers, and story-telling that ranges from Yorkshire to Hong Kong.In writing about the world they experience, Oysterband’s politically-alert songs have become at once more implicit and autobiographical (“Born Under The Same Sun”, “Streams Of Innocence”) and more urgently green (“The Time Is Now” and the elegiac “Wonders Are Passing”). The band is fond of saying that whatever happens out there, they find they’ve already written a song about it – never more true than now.

As well as founder-members John Jones, Alan Prosser and Ian Telfer, plus producer Al Scott, Read The Sky features new drummer Sean Randle (formerly of Zubop, Happy End) and on cello and Telecaster Adrian Oxaal, who moonlights as lead guitarist for rock band James.