folk music
Album: Erlend Apneseth - Song Over StøvMonday, 31 March 2025
A pizzicato violin opens Song Over Støv. Gradually, other instruments arrive: bowed violin, a fluttering flute, pattering percussion, an ominous double bass. They merge. The climax is furious, intensely rhythmic. Suddenly, it is over.“Straumen frobi... Read more... |
Album: Jason Isbell - Foxes in the SnowFriday, 14 March 2025
America – the pro-wrestling-ass nation, the ultimate society of the spectacle – famously likes things big, and modern country and western music has gone along with that. Big hats, big trucks, big sentiment, big pop production, very big sales indeed... Read more... |
First Person: singer-songwriter David Gray on how the songs on his new album came to himThursday, 13 March 2025
Occasionally, when I pass my own reflection, out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the likeness of my father, shining out through the bones in my face. In this way his ghost walks with me. Sometimes the making process can feel like... Read more... |
Album: Reg Meuross, Fire & Dust: A Woody Guthrie StoryMonday, 10 March 2025
I come to this album from a week or so spent among the denizens of the New York and Boston folk revivals, including a key figure from Tulsa and the Guthrie Center, and a concert (Judy Collins, marking 85 years of music and activism).They were a... Read more... |
Album: Basia Bulat - Basia's PalaceWednesday, 19 February 2025
Canadian singer Basia Bulat has tried on various musical hats during her career but is most associated with singer-songwriterly folk-pop. Her last album was the melancholic, string-swathed The Garden but with Basia’s Palace, her seventh album, she... Read more... |
Josienne Clarke, Across the Evening Sky, Kings Place review - celebrating Sandy DennyTuesday, 18 February 2025
On the first date of a 17-concert tour that had its preview at Celtic Connections in January, Across the Evening Sky begins with the liminal, predatory dangers of associating in any way with the sly “Reynardine”, with Matt Robinson on piano and... Read more... |
Braimah Kanneh-Mason, Fernandes, Gent, 229 review - a beguiling trip around the worldMonday, 10 February 2025
It was the sonically adventurous, shiveringly atmospheric cello piece by Latvian composer Preteris Vasks that proved to be the first showstopper of this enjoyably esoteric evening. Dutch cellist Hadewych van Gent began the pianissimo movement of... Read more... |
Amelia Coburn, Komedia, Brighton review - short set from rising Teeside folk sensation hits the sweet spotThursday, 23 January 2025
The quandary is this. Middlesbrough singer Amelia Coburn made one of my favourite albums of last year, her debut, Between the Moon and the Milkman, and I hear she’s playing live near me on the south coast, not something that happens every day.Then I... Read more... |
Album: Tunng - Love You All Over AgainWednesday, 22 January 2025
This is Tunng’s ninth album, their first in five years, and marks their 20th anniversary by consciously going full circle to the gentle sound sculpture and folk melody of their earliest work. It is also thrown into fascinating relief by... Read more... |
Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter, Julie Fowlis & Karine Polwart - Looking For the ThreadMonday, 20 January 2025
It’s been five years since the last studio album by the inestimable Mary Chapin Carpenter, the lyrical and intimate The Dirt and the Stars, recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, the second of two projects with producer Ethan Johns... Read more... |
A Complete Unknown review - how does it feel?Friday, 17 January 2025
Being unknowable has been almost as much of a preoccupation for the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman as writing songs. Previously on film he has played the role of Alias in Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, having first presented himself to... Read more... |
Album: The Weather Station - HumanhoodThursday, 16 January 2025
Four of Humanhood’s 13 tracks are short, impressionistic mood pieces. Between 48 seconds and just-over a minute-and-a-half long, they mostly lack singing. Instrumentation is jazzy, leaning on piano and wind instruments. Drones and white noise evoke... Read more... |
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