Ma Polaine’s Great Decline

Ma Polaine’s Great Decline are Beth Packer and Clinton Hough, a Somerset duo making genre-straddling beauty, dark and light, since 2011. It began with a failed attempt to rework an old blues number, which wandered off and became their first original, “Pigfoot Blues”. It didn’t suit the band they were in, so they started another. Five albums and five EPs later, the songs keep coming.
Reviewers have reached for Billie Holiday and Tom Waits, but as an independent band they’re free to write what they like, and they do. Beth’s emotive voice carries abstract tales, wry humour and raw beauty, with her double bass anchoring the sound. Clinton’s guitar answers with rich chords, gritty riffs and room to breathe.
The latest, Monster Swan, came out in February 2026 with a bluesier edge. Fatea Magazine named them Best Band/Duo, and they’ve had airplay on 6 Music and Cerys Matthews’ Radio 2 Blues Show. MOJO described them as “sufficiently unhinged to keep you guessing”.
Beth grew up in Cornwall, singing Brenda Wootton songs as a child, so a night in Penzance is something of a homecoming.
Songs with some mileage, in a room where you can hear every word. And who, exactly, is Ma Polaine?