Dark Lantern

Dark Lantern were a mid-90s English folk duo consisting of Allan Greenwood and Samantha Holmes. Greenwood had started his recording career in the 1980s as Alan Ayre in the New Wave group Trance (9). Holmes latterly changed her name to Kit Holmes and found some success as a guitar-based singer/songwriter. Both Greenwood and Holmes were accomplished classical musicians and honed their early ideas by gigging extensively on the UK folk circuit. Their eponymous album featured a mixture of original compositions and reinterpreted folk standards. Rock & Reel called it “dark, brooding beauty”, Folk Roots referred to it as “folksy pop from the other side” and Dirty Linen described the duo as ”attacking fire belchers”. By the time of the single Lhasa a couple of years later, their sound was becoming more contemporary with some electronic influences, but it was destined to be their last output as Dark Lantern. They experimented with a folk-dance fusion as Innocence (15), and summery acoustic pop as SpinacHoney, before prioritising Holmes’s solo career.