It’s common enough for reviewers simply not to review a disc that falls well short of the mark. In this case I make an exception, lest readers be misled as to what’s on offer. The programme as such isn’t at issue, as long as you’re not squeamish: one’s not likely to find a more generous selection of catches by Purcell and his contemporaries, interspersed for variety’s sake with similarly light-hearted instrumental selections performed on a number of plucked instruments of the time (some of them entertainingly exotic, and well illustrated in the accompanying poster). The problem, I feel, is in the performance: Dante Ferrara is not an ensemble but a one-man band playing and singing everything himself, thanks to copious overdubbing. There’s no reason why this shouldn’t work as long as it doesn’t show. Alas, the dances’ metronomic rigidity belies their function, and the catches fare worse still: the overdubbed ale-house atmosphere; the voices delivered in a near-monotone to microphone, lacking any sense of conviviality; worse still, the coy interjections (stray “oohs” in falsetto), relegating this emphatically bawdy humour to the arch tweeness of Carry On films. Far more convincing and accomplished recreations are to be had from the Mufitians of Grope Lane and their “Bawdy Ballads” (Regis, 6/05) or the Hilliard Ensemble’s The Singing Club (Harmonia Mundi, 9/85R). The shame here is that so many classics of the genre fail entirely to come off.