JUST like a kid looks forward to Christmas, a new Lisa Knapp album is always something to anticipate.

You can never guess what you’re going to get from Knapp (below), who’s not unlike an English Bjork both in vocal style and sonic invention.

This time round, Till April Is Dead: A Garland of May (Ear to the Ground) is a dazzling reinvention of May songs that showcases Knapp’s eclectic, irreverent but thoughtful approach to the tradition.

The songs are familiar — the Padstow May Song, the Bedfordshire May Carol, Hal-an-Tow — but the treatment is anything but.

Choruses are cut up and pasted together wonkily. Chiming clocks and bells burst in unexpectedly. Insects and birds buzz and chirrup below layers of percussion, hammered dulcimer, bass and fiddle.

And above it all swoop Knapp’s wondrous vocals, ranging from brittle and childish to soaring glory.

Listening to her albums is like cracking open a classic fantasy novel or taking a peek into fairyland — a glimpse of something wild and rich and strange.

Knapp isn’t just a great folk artist, she’s a great artist, full stop and deserves far wider mainstream recognition. Maybe this masterpiece will help her get it.

Knapp also pops up on the other landmark release this spring, From Here: English Folk Field Recordings (From Here Records).

Put together by Stick in the Wheel, a gleefully iconoclastic London trio, it features a host of names both great and lesser-known.

The aim was to record live and on location — capturing songs in the same plain, heartfelt style that Stick in the Wheel themselves use so wonderfully —with an eye on the artists’ musical or geographical roots and inspirations.

Eliza Carthy is on rollicking form for broadside ballad The Sea, her father Martin’s nimble guitar is to the fore on The Bedmaking and former Bellowhead frontman Jon Boden wrings unexpected melancholy from the drinking anthem Fathom the Bowl.

There isn’t a weak song on here. But among the less familiar names, Peta Webb and Ken Hall — stalwarts of the London folk clubs — harmonise to stunning effect on Just A Note/Wild Wild Whiskey.

And Tynesider Stew Simpson’s bull-throated rendition of the coalmining song Eh Aww Ah Cud Hew will stop you in your tracks.

Meanwhile, there are a couple of cracking albums for fans of uptempo Celtic folk.

Scottish veterans Old Blind Dogs return after several years with Room With a View (OBD Music), a pulsating mix of tunes and songs ranging from the full-throttle opener Bunker Hill to a rousing take on Warlike Lads Of Russia, a ballad of Bonaparte’s disastrous defeat.

And English rock-fusion band Roving Crows lay down an early marker for the festival season with Bury Me Naked (Roving Crows).

Their spiky, percussion-driven sound puts them firmly in the same camp as Shooglenifty or Afro Celt Sound System — perfect for a cidered-up crowd on a warm summer night.

James Miller