folk music
Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow HeldMonday, 21 July 2025
Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam Sweeney (of Bellowhead and Leveret) was its director. They released their first album, You Golden, three... Read more... |
The Estonian Song and Dance Celebration 2025 review - the mass expression of freedomThursday, 10 July 2025
The branch of the fast-food chain Hesburger in downtown Tallinn shopping centre Solaris is busy. Nothing unusual as it’s located by the entrance to a multi-screen cinema. Double cheeseburgers and fries are going over the counter. Less typically, two... Read more... |
Album: Brìghde Chaimbeul - SunwiseMonday, 30 June 2025
The first five-and-a-half minutes of Sunwise’s opening track “Dùsgadh / Waking" are taken up by a drone. Played on the Scottish small pipes – a form of bagpipes – this is in due course supplemented by a series of individual notes played in clusters... Read more... |
Album: JF Robitaille & Lail Arad - Wild MovesSaturday, 28 June 2025
Around eight years ago, London singer-songwriter Lail Arad started releasing one-off tracks with Canadian singer JF Robitaille, once of Montreal indie outfit The Social Register (Arad’s own 2016 album The Onion is an undiscovered diamond that should... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 91: Sex Pistols, Pink Floyd, Tropical Fuck Storm, Sparks, The Sisters of Mercy and moreTuesday, 24 June 2025
VINYL OF THE MONTHFrank From Blue Velvet I Am Frank (Property of the Lost) + Column258 Interloper (The Workshop Sessions, Volume One) (Property of the Lost)Hastings label Property of the Lost has grown into a potent force, its stable of artists... Read more... |
Patrick Wolf, Rough Trade East review - the Kent-based bard refashions his new album ‘Crying the Neck’Friday, 20 June 2025
After the evening’s second song “The Last of England,” Patrick Wolf cautions “I’ve got nothing left to say.” During the shows leading up to this outing promoting his new album Crying the Neck, he says he felt “like I’ve been drag-queen story hour”... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Gather In The MushroomsSunday, 08 June 2025
“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley says it is “as evocative as its title. The song has a deeply wooded sound, like a cross between... Read more... |
The Ballad of Wallis Island review - the healing power of the old songsSunday, 01 June 2025
I think The Ballad of Wallis Island is the best British romcom since I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), which it closely resembles.In the earlier film, an unexpected love affair develops on a remote Scottish island that is cut off by stormy weather.... Read more... |
Album: Nick Mulvey - Dark Harvest Pt.1Saturday, 31 May 2025
Nick Mulvey’s first two albums, First Mind in 2014 and Wake Up Now in 2017, are among the loveliest singer-songwriter fare released this century. With his last album, 2022’s New Mythology, his ayahuasca-fuelled search for spiritual meaning went full... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 90: Small Faces, ESKA, Luvcat, Dope Lemon, Celia Cruz, Monolake and moreWednesday, 28 May 2025
VINYL OF THE MONTHEmily Saunders Moon Shifts Oceans (The Mix Sounds)It’s de rigeur nowadays, if you love music, to love Joni Mitchell. She is, of course, a great soul, but her music never connected here. That said, I have a favourite Joni Mitchell... Read more... |
Marwood, Crabb, Wigmore Hall review - tangos, laments and an ascending larkTuesday, 27 May 2025
James Crabb is a musical magician, taking the ever-unfashionable accordion into new and unlikely places, through bespoke arrangements of a spectrum of pieces which brim with wit and inventiveness. This lunchtime concert with violinist Anthony... Read more... |
Lucy Farrell, Catherine MacLellan, The Green Note review - sublime frequenciesThursday, 15 May 2025
Lucy Farrell, one quarter of the brilliant, award-winning Anglo-Scots band Furrow Collective, and a solo artist whose stunning debut album, We Are Only Sound, was released in 2023, divides her time between the UK – she’s a native of Kent – and... Read more... |
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