The big hole left by the much loved Bellowhead has been amply filled in recently by the 12-piece The Wayward Band, led by folk queen Eliza Carthy. A veritable dream team of players – including Bellowhead's Sam Sweeney and musicians from Mawkin, Blowzabella, Emily Portman Trio, Tyde and others – they came together touring in support of Carthy's Best Of… compilation, Wayward Daughter, released to coincide with her biography. It proved to be such a success that she decided to make a new album with the band, including guest vocalists in the shape of Teddy Thompson, MC Dizreali and Damien Dempsey. Made early last year at Real World and Rockfield studios, with Jim Sutherland co-producing, Carthy and company set about recording an eclectic folk-fuelled mix of contemporary songs and several examples of the Broadside ballad collections housed in Chetham's Library in Manchester.

Bucking the trend for stripping things back, Big Machine is an eclectic and largely energetic affair, in line with Carthy's ambitious cravings, one which has always been willing and able to do things a little differently, and fearlessly. By distilling the spirit of folk and its fundamental earthiness, and applying all sorts of other styles, attitudes and methods in creating something vibrant and new fashioned, she's helping to invite newcomers and non-believers into the fold, along with diehard folkies. It's folk music at heart, but everything bar the kitchen sink has been skillfully thrown in, in creating a spirited, sometimes theatrical, and sometimes sombre work, that fuses the new and old, covering themes such as domestic abuse, seafaring ways, migration and murder. Old age themes in the world of folk but just as relevant in the here and now, especially in the hands of this punk-folk-musician.

Violin plucks lead in to some Bond-esque blazing brass on the big band feel of lead track 'Fade & Fall (Love Not)' while 'Devil in the Woman' is an inventive Oysterband-style fusion of prog-folk, with semi-chanting female vocals telling a tale of domestic abuse. And there's more judicious brass on Ewan MacColl's 'The Fitter's Song', Carthy trurning this into an almost Vaudevillian explosion of colour and theatricality, which segues very impressively into 'Jack Warrell's (Excerpt)/Love Lane'; which initially asserts itself like a hyperactive Penguin Cafe Orchestra repetitive style groove before it turns on a dime and becomes a similarly manic prog-reel fling-a-long.

Providing some respite from the high energy of these first four tracks, Rory MacLeod's 'Hug You Like A Mountain' is tender at first, before morphing into the closest thing to pop on the album, aided by the voice of Teddy Thompson, an artist who, like Carthy, once flirted with big labels and grooming for pop stardom. Even more contemporary is the appearance of MC Dizraeli, a former Brightonian and lead singer/rapper of Dizraeli and the Small Gods, who adds urban bite and a hip-hop sensibility to the Carthy original 'You Know Me', a perfect example of her well-developed understanding of other forms of music. And together with the social-conscience-based lyrics of Dizraeli, they tackle migration and the current immigration crisis, whilst offering the hand of friendship and hospitality.

And then, just like that, we get a more traditional sea shanty style number in the form of the jolly 'Great Grey Black', but which also contains modern nautical references along with some more New Orleans-style sounds. This is followed by a wonderfully raw fiddle turn by Carthy herself, accompanied by a vocal for the first half of 'Mrs. Dyer The Baby Farmer', before the band come clattering in on this somewhat macabre tale of Amelia Dyer, a female serial killer who was hanged in 1896. And Damien Dempsey joins the band for 'I Wish That the Wars Were All Over', a sad ballad of epic proportions recorded live in the Real World recording studio.

The final track 'Epitaph' displays a degree of humour sometimes lacking from the earnestness of folk music, this faintly mad string-laden folk-rocker tune ending with the words 'there is no other weapon like death by custard'.

Throughout Big Machine, Carthy's voice is nuanced, and yet powerful, with a gritty weatheredness that recalls Marianne Faithful. And with her small army of musicians and vocalists behind her she has produced a passionate, ambitious, colourful and fresh update on folk.

Jeff Hemmings