folk music
Album: Seth Lakeman - The Somerset SessionsSaturday, 01 July 2023Dartmoor-born folk star Seth Lakeman has an illustrious album catalogue behind him, and this is the general release of a limited-edition vinyl released earlier this year for Record Store Day.Lakeman’s songs embrace traditional folk, pop music and... Read more... |
Album: Brigid Mae Power - Dream From The Deep WellSaturday, 24 June 2023The cover versions on Dream From The Deep Well include “I Know Who is Sick,” most familiar from the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Maken interpretation, and “Down by the Glenside,” which The Dubliners incorporated into their repertoire. The first opens... Read more... |
Album: Bob Dylan - Shadow KingdomSaturday, 27 May 2023Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom first crossed our paths in July 2021, his first streaming event, and coming little more than a year after the garden of unearthly delights that was Rough and Rowdy Ways. To enter this kingdom, you were given a key code... Read more... |
Album: Shirley Collins - Archangel HillFriday, 26 May 2023Mount Caburn is east of Lewes in Sussex. Shirley Collins’s stepfather used to call it Archangel Hill. The site of an Iron Age hill fort, it was defended with a ditch during the Roman and Saxon periods. In World War II, a gun emplacement was... Read more... |
Songlines Encounters, Kings Place review - moments of magicFriday, 19 May 2023These encounters are ones that may lead to lifelong relationships, with the halls at Kings Place this coming weekend filled with music from Mali, Colombia, Turkey, Georgia, Estonia, Tibet and a woodland in Sussex.Friday’s double-headed line-up... Read more... |
Tallinn Music Week 2023 review - when music is unavoidably the language of freedomThursday, 18 May 2023Estonia’s Mart Avi styles himself as “the twilight samurai of alternative pop”. He creates “nowhere-somewhere music, mapping uncharted territories between avant-pop and timeless grandeur”. The characterisations are issued via AVICORP, his internet... Read more... |
Album: Paul Simon - Seven PsalmsWednesday, 17 May 2023Paul Simon is an ornery bugger. Full of awkwardness and perversity as a person, seemingly hugely detached, but as an artist capable of as much tenderness and directness as just about anyone out there. Capable of making world-changing artistic... Read more... |
Album: The Milk Carton Kids - I Only See the MoonMonday, 15 May 2023Life is better together, and the beauteous sounds created by The Milk Carton Kids proves it. Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan got their acts together in 2011, having each pursued solo careers that never quite gelled. Ryan pitched up at a Pattengale... Read more... |
Lankum, Barbican review - a stunning setSaturday, 06 May 2023“YOUR NEW ALBUM IS FUCKING DEADLY!” hollers a voice from the depths of a full house at the Barbican on Thursday night, the first date on the north Dublin band’s UK tour for their stunning new album, False Lankum.Queue it up for your listening... Read more... |
Album: Lucy Farrell - We Are Only SoundWednesday, 19 April 2023Lucy Farrell has a singular voice, contained and controlled but subtle and expressive. Since graduating from Newcastle’s folk course in the noughties she’s performed and recorded as a duo with Jonny Kearney, as one quarter of the BBC Folk Award-... Read more... |
Yang, BBCSO, Oramo, Barbican review - roots and refinementMonday, 17 April 2023In today’s Britain, too many concert reviews have to begin with the vandalistic threats of damage or extinction that hang over their performers. Last week, it emerged that the BBC’s bosses may be open to negotiate an alternative future for its... Read more... |
Album: Josienne Clarke - OnlinessWednesday, 12 April 2023If you key in "Josienne Clarke" on Google, you’ll hit on the "About" section of her website, and the following declaration sets up her stall: "No label, no musical partner, no producer. Clarke is in complete control of her songwriting, arranging,... Read more... |