Named after the Duke of Marlborough, one of whose caprices was inventing the Oxford Canal, The Duke’s Cut is a vast improvement on the execrable Rosie O’ Grady’s, from whose ashes it sprung. Reinvented as a folk music and real ale pub, after the cod-Irish offensiveness of its predecessor, the joint still has a bit of a learning curve to climb: real ale types never get into fights (the worst you get are bumping beer bellies), so doormen are redundant, and real ale types actually LIKE drinking the stuff they drink, so it’s advisable to keep a cask or two in hand. By the time I left, the number of ales on tap had dwindled from four to one, due to their deliciousness. Plan for success, dear landlord.

Still this is a music review, not a CAMRA newsletter, so on to Branch Immersion, a likeable two-piece performing tonight as part of the Oxfringe Festival. The duet offers an anglicised version of various folk musical styles, from flamenco through very polite blues to Simon and Garfunkel. They are proper players, especially the beardy fellow playing lead Spanish guitar and harmonising attractively at key points. Their songs aren’t very original, but the lyrics, abstruse and sometimes over-wordy, occasionally offer a welcome pungency: one song describes the terrible revenge of a clump of trees after a pair of lovers carve each others’ initials into the bark. Whether this amounts to a hill of Tolkienesque claptrap, or a welcome condemnation of humans’ careless attitude to the natural world may depend on your politics.

The lead singer is thoroughly competent but colourless and in the end Branch Immersion aren’t doing anything that isn’t being done in the corner of any well-run country pub from Cumbria to Cornwall. Still, they deserve respect for adding a dash of intelligence, warmth and humanity to Park End Street, probably the worst street in Oxford. Looking out beyond them across the canal, you are confronted with the ugly antics of drunk, overweight women who have seen too many winters. Rather in here than out there.

Branch Immersion Myspace