Brokaw and Farina bring their dry and smokey, low-key singing, and their clear-as-a-bell virtuoso guitar-playing to a series of North American, pre-WWII classics. Taken from the blues, folk and ragtime repertoire, most of these songs will be known to anyone with an interest in American music. But its unlikely that anyone has heard them played like this for many years – clean and clear, spared of all hokey- folkiness, and with a handful of fresh details that really allow them to breathe again, as if they’d only been written yesterday. Farina’s jazzy, European- inflected acoustic flourishes, and Brokaw’s dusty country finger-picking are a perfect compliment to one another, and ‘The Angel’s Message To Me’ is a soothing tonic: a collection of songs written in one economic recession, then beautifully resurrected and updated. These songs will provide solace to troubled times and minds all over again.