Smoke Fairies are one of those bands who, year in year out, have been feted as "the best new band" or "ones to watch" or "the best new band to watch of the ones that are new", that sort of thing.

But they're not new and Through Low Light and Trees isn't even their debut album (though it will undoubtedly be reviewed as such). None of that is important.

Neither is it important that Jessica Davies (blonde) and Katherine Blamire (brunette) met at school in Chichester when they were 11, though it perhaps explains their expansive and imaginative sense of humour (more of which later). What is important is that as soon as they were old enough they moved to New Orleans in the hope of soaking up the music of the South. And soak it up they did.

Through Low Light and Trees is the album Robert Plant would make if he were young and beautiful again. It's an album Bob Dylan might listen to before he went to bed, if he ever went to bed. It's an album that could make PJ Harvey take playing the guitar seriously again. This is what modern music can sound like now everything in the past is up for grabs. Though it sounds unlike anything you'll have heard.

Through Low Light and Trees isn't an impression of anything old. This is a modern record, haunted by the ghosts of all such records before it. The Smoke Fairies like ghosts; the real ghosts - not the ghosts of limited imagination who flap about at night, needlessly slamming doors and knocking vases off shelves. The ghosts of nostalgia; nostalgia for what never was, and yearning for what never will be - the sad beating heart of all truly English music

But then it should probably be said that Smoke Fairies aren't a folk group, because that's a used and abused term that's of little descriptive use. They don't sing folk songs. Except you can clearly detect threads of Shirley and Dolly Collins' minor key pastoral laments in the beautiful storytelling of Dragon. And the all too often erroneously evoked Steeleye Span can be glimpsed in the plaintive viola and pounding drums of Devil In My Mind. Perhaps Smoke Fairies are the ghosts of a folk group. Perhaps not.

Such slight similarities are no doubt coincidental, but if Through Low Light and Trees exists in any recognisable rock critic framework then it's the Electric Eden* of Ashley Hutchings, Maddy Prior, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson and Joe Boyd. (*Incidentally, this album makes an apt soundtrack to Rob Young's dazzling dot-connecting book of the same name). There's nothing nu or token about this album's relationship with the traditional music that informs it (either consciously or unconsciously). Smoke Fairies are not a folk group but Through Low Light and Trees is a classic English folk blues record, soaked in the sea spray of the Atlantic but with eyes fixed on the craggy British coastline.  Torn between two worlds.

It will be evident to almost anyone that Smoke Fairies are beautiful. If this troubles you then be assured this beauty is offset by the fact that in person they're disarmingly funny, uncool and lovably klutz-like; it takes the curse off that particular aspect of nature's cruel selection process. They also talk bollocks. Wonderfully, meandering, hilarious bollocks. However, you will not get this from the record. Through Low Light and Trees is a very serious record.

To pick out a few highlights: Storm Song is the result of fourteen years of honing their sparse, swampy, deftly picked guitar lines and Home Counties accented wails to perfection. But the masterpiece comes in Erie Lackawana, a tale of old age and loss that'll have you checking the sleeve for a Neil Young writing credit. And as you begin to pin Smoke Fairies down as exemplary one-trick ponies, they pull out Blue Skies Fall, which conjures the continentally breezy sounds of Alison Statton's Weekend.

Through Low Light and Trees is the pinnacle of everything the Smoke Fairies have created so far, via numerous treasured 7" singles, while mapping out so many possible roads to follow next. It's also one of the best albums of the year.

Through Low Light and Trees is released via V2/Cooperative Music on September 6.

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