folk music
Album: Damien Jurado - Reggae Film StarMonday, 27 June 2022![]() American singer-songwriter Damien Jurado is both prolific and enigmatic. His latest album follows too many to count (OK, not really, I think this is his 20th). On his own label, it's as opaque as anything he’s done, and that’s saying something.There... Read more... |
Music Reissues Weekly: Ban the Bomb - Music of the Aldermaston Anti-Nuclear MarchesSunday, 19 June 2022![]() “The case is quite simple. We think that the policy which is being pursued by the western powers is one which is almost bound to end in the extermination of the human race. Some of us think that might be rather a pity.”This extract from a 1958... Read more... |
Album: Nick Mulvey - New MythologyFriday, 10 June 2022![]() In these meta times when everything – EVERYTHING! – is ironic, a smirk to be replayed forever on a screen, the last thing we expect is a hippy, a proper real-life hippy, preaching oneness and love. Even yoga sorts these days mostly go on about... Read more... |
Album: Heidi Talbot - Sing it for a LifetimeMonday, 23 May 2022![]() As break-up albums go, Heidi Talbot’s new set knocks that tightly wound ball of heartbreak, separation and release into the front rank, on an arc of often beautifully melodic self-penned songs, choice covers, and accompanists including guitarist... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Estonia: Tallinn-Narva Music Week review - solidarity through music on the Russian borderWednesday, 11 May 2022![]() The gentleman in the centre of the picture above is Ivan Dorn. In Ukraine, he’s a pop star. A big pop star. His music, as he puts it on stage during the show opening Tallinn-Narva Music Week, is “pure Ukrainian house music.” Yep, there’s the bing-... Read more... |
Album: The Waterboys - All Souls HillMonday, 09 May 2022![]() This album starts with an unfortunate sound. Its title track begins with the kind of drum loop that rock bands from U2 on down adopted in the early 1990s having heard Massive Attack and Happy Mondays and deciding that they were going to get on the... Read more... |
Album: Kate Rusby - 30: Happy ReturnsWednesday, 04 May 2022![]() Not quite 50 and already Kate Rusby has notched up 30 years on the professional stage, an anniversary marked by a new album featuring newly recorded favourite songs from across her career on which “the Barnsley Nightingale” is joined by an array of... Read more... |
Album: Jono McCleery - Moonlit ParadeSaturday, 23 April 2022![]() Jono McCleery has one of those voices that once heard, demands your attention, an instrument of richness and depth, and one that has earned him many fans. The likes of Vashti Bunyan and Tom Robinson helped to crowdfund his recording debut back in... Read more... |
Album: Kurt Vile - (Watch My Moves)Wednesday, 13 April 2022![]() Although the term “hipster” has become degraded to well beyond cliché, Kurt Vile is one of those artists whose fans may indeed have that in-the-know smugness. With Vile, though, this is not a bad thing. Given the increasingly confidence-shedding... Read more... |
Album: Sirom - The Liquified Throne of SimplicityMonday, 11 April 2022![]() Expansive, free-form, handmade and improvised, the extravagantly-titled The Liquified Throne of Simplicity is the fourth album from this freewheeling Slovenian trio of multi-instrumentalists. They forage among the world’s musics as well as their own... Read more... |
Album: Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage - Ink of the Rosy MorningThursday, 31 March 2022![]() What an exquisite album! Beautiful voices that harmonise to perfection, superlative instrumental work, and songs both new and old yet all somehow familiar and timeless. Ink of the Rosy Morning: A Sampling of Folk Songs from Britain and North America... Read more... |
The Weather Station, Scala review - communion achieved against the oddsThursday, 24 March 2022![]() Acknowledging the contrast between personal and public situations, The Weather Station’s Tamara Lindeman says “I have a lot of songs about not being heard, yet I’m holding this microphone.” An individual’s voice can be ignored, but if it’s given a... Read more... |
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