Megan Henwood

It's been nearly four years since the award-winning singer-songwriter released her debut album, and while much in her life has changed, the only difference in how Megan approaches her work is that, if anything, she's even more determined to make music that defies the boundaries and boxes others have sometimes tried to place around this most singular and distinctive of new British voices.

"This new record is a lot darker," she says, "and there've been times over the last year where I've thought what I was doing was terrifying. I think that comes across in some of the songs."

It's not just Henwood's honesty in conversation that strikes you. She's every bit as open in her songwriting, which finds her dealing, as often as not, with deeply personal - though universal - themes and drawing on sometimes painful experiences. As a writer and performer she belongs to a tradition, though perhaps not solely to the one many expected after she and her brother, Joe, won BBC Radio 2's Young Folk Award in 2009. Instead, the lineage that Henwood can claim is the same one that Bob Dylan tapped in to when he upset folk purists, first by writing his own songs, then by going electric; she is closer in spirit to idiosyncratic singer-songwriters such as her key influences - Elliott Smith, Bill Withers, Anaïs Mitchell - or to those writers who similarly dig down deep into music's roots to find new ways to innovate: Terry Callier, Tom Waits, PJ Harvey.

“Henwood’s debut announced her as a promising new voice on the contemporary English folk scene; this confirms her as one of its finest exponents" FOLKRADIO.COM