Martha Tilston may be steeped in the folk tradition but it’s taken her a surprisingly long time to make an unabashedly trad album.

Daughter of Steve Tilston, stepdaughter of Irish traditional singer Maggie Boyle, she’s spoken of her desire to challenge the modern world with songs about the environment and the corporate grind instead of “maids on the moor.”

But on The Sea (Squiggly Records) she jumps in at the deep end with an ocean-themed collection, drawing heavily from the tradition and from her family connections. Boyle, father Steve and brother Joe pop up as well as her uncle Kevin Whately — yes, Lewis from Inspector Morse — who proves a fine singer in his own right.

That family alchemy brings rich depth to standards such as Black Waterside, Shallow Brown and Lowlands of Holland.

And Mermaid of Zennor, one of two Tilston originals based on a legend from her Cornish childhood home, is a ballad of rare beauty whose swooping grace ought to make it a strong contender for a BBC Folk Award.

Despite its impeccably English title track — named after the filming location of Brief Encounter — Jennifer Crook’s Carnforth Station (Transatlantic Roots) has a strong transatlantic flavour to its theme of travel and searching.

At times breaking out into outright bluegrass, it makes a neat combination, since old-time US music has always sung of rootlessness, restlessness and the quest for home.

Crook’s an accomplished harpist and her haunting lead lines are delicately backed by harmony, guitar, double bass, cello and accordion from collaborators Beth Porter and Mike Cosgrave, plus guests Miranda Sykes and Kevin Brown.

Crook is a new name to me but these intimate and evocative songs reminded me of no-one so much as the great US songwriter and banjo player Abigail Washburn. High praise.

Another transatlantic genre-bending effort comes from the Willows — a hotly tipped Cambridge quintet — who have been turning heads at festivals, from the university city to Glastonbury.

It doesn’t take long to work out why. Amidst Fiery Skies (Elk Records) is big, sweeping acoustic music, layer upon layer of banjo, fiddle, vocals and guitar, played with crackling energy and an intuitive grasp of when to pile on the intensity and when to slow down and let the spaces speak for themselves.

An eclectic choice of material ranges from the Irish ballad Maid of Culmore to Goodnight Loving Trail, the classic cowboy ballad by the US socialist Utah Phillips and a standout from a very strong line-up. It’s a compliment to their songwriting skills and grasp of the idiom that it’s hard to tell which are traditional and which are their own.

The Willows are on tour throughout October and on this form it’s a good idea to catch them while they’re still playing intimate venues. That may not last long.

The catalogue of Topic — spun out of the Workers Music Association — underpins the folk tradition like Shakespeare and Chaucer combined but it’s huge enough that there’s always something new to find in its cavernous vaults.

Voice + Vision (Topic Records) was put together for the General Federation of Trade Unions both as a GFTU fundraiser and a lesson in the centuries-long labour struggle.

It crams an enormous amount into its two CDs. The classics are present and correct, including Joe Hill and the Internationale.

Songs of historical toil, poverty and struggle — Black Leg Miner, Poverty Knock and the Copper Family’s The Month of May — rub shoulders with the likes of Banner Theatre’s Saltley Gates, from their 2004 show about the miners’ strike, and Martin Simpson’s heart-stopping cover of Leon Rosselson’s Palaces of Gold.

That song in particular, written after the 1968 Aberfan disaster, resonates painfully in an age when the coalition are determined to plunge us back into the misery we fought for decades to escape.

For anyone not familiar with Topic’s output, or its radical history, this is a fine place to start exploring.