YORKSHIRE duo O’Hooley and Tidow are one of the strongest songwriting partnerships on the contemporary folk scene.
 

Belinda O’Hooley – a former member of Rachel Unthank and the Winterset – met her future civil partner and musical collaborator on the music scene in Huddersfield, where the pair still live and work.
 

“The first time we sang together,” Belinda recalls, “we just looked at each other and thought ‘that’s interesting’ – our voices just seemed to blend, and we seemed to write better songs together as well.”
 

O’Hooley and Tidow have now followed up their 2012 release ‘The Fragile’ with ‘The Hum’ – a meticulously crafted nest of songs dealing with the undercurrent of optimism, grit and mettle in migrating people, the oppressed, and the disenfranchised.
 

The record’s title came from a conversation with Belinda and Heidi’s neighbour, who was telling them about the sale of a nearby house falling through after the buyers noticed the humming noise of the local factory.
 

She said, ‘the sound of the factory gives me comfort – it’s the sound of people working’ – and the idea for the album was born.
 

Each song explores a different aspect of the powerful hum of life, from Ewan MacColl’s ode to the navvy ‘Just a Note’, to the punky, feminist stance of Pussy Riot’s infamous protest against Putin in ‘Coil & Spring’.
 

On first listen, the anthemic ‘Summat’s Brewin’’ sounds like a joyful celebration of the craft of real ale-making in their hometown of Huddersfield.
 

But further listens show the obsessive real ale fan as a revolutionary, standing up against corporate domination and the destruction of the local British pub.
 

In terms of their songwriting, Belinda describes it as ‘unprolific – we’re like a couple of slugs, it can take up to a year for us to finish a full song’.
 

“We do a lot of walking because we’ve got this beautiful countryside on our doorstep, and on those walks we do a lot of talking about various subjects.
 

“Somebody might have told us a story or it might be something we’ve seen on a film - we generally think of ourselves as collectors of other people’s stories.”
 

O’Hooley and Tidow play at The Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal, on March 6.