folk music
Vossa Jazz 2023 review: Norwegian festival’s 50th-anniversary edition keeps traditional music closeThursday, 06 April 2023
Two drummers are drumming. One held the beat on ABBA’s “Super Trouper”. He is Sweden’s Per Lindvall, more usually associated with jazz. The other is Norway’s Rune Arnesen, whose recording credits are also stylistically varied. Locked-in tight... Read more... |
Album: Reg Meuross - Stolen from GodWednesday, 05 April 2023
Anyone who’s heard even a smidgin of Reg Meuross’s music will know what a wonderful writer he is, homing in on often painful aspects of our shared history and retelling it in powerful and poignant songs that make any half-sentient listener want to... Read more... |
Album: Josephine Foster - Domestic SphereMonday, 03 April 2023
On Domestic Sphere, Josephine Foster’s guitar and voice are joined by clacking crickets, a flock of sheep and wailing cats recorded in La Janda in southern Spain. There are also Colorado and Tennessee's birds and frogs. Foster’s great-... Read more... |
Album: Leveret - FormsSaturday, 25 March 2023
Ten years ago, three leading young English folk musicians got together in a room and swapped some tunes – Rob Harbron, whose English concertina graced the likes of The Remnant Kings and Emily Portman’s albums; melodeon player Andy Cutting, a three-... Read more... |
Album: Van Morrison - Moving on SkiffleWednesday, 08 March 2023
This double album takes Van Morrison back to one of his early muses – Skiffle and its repertoire, that precursor to the rock'n'roll years that took hold of Britain in the 1950s, having percolated across the USA through the first half of the century... Read more... |
Eliza Carthy and The Restitution, Barbican review - folk at its finestTuesday, 07 February 2023
Eliza Carthy has been busy, as she always has. Recording various albums with various artists during the pandemic, her show with her band, The Restitution (and many others), at the Barbican on Saturday, was well stuffed with music, musicians,... Read more... |
Northern Winter Beat 2023 review - Panda Bear, Sonic Boom and Širom amongst the highlights in Denmark’s northThursday, 02 February 2023
It’s the sound of the sun. Panda Bear – born Noah Lennox – is singing in a voice with the purity and warmth of Brian Wilson. Beside him, Sonic Boom – Pete Kember – has more of a growl, a timbre which might make announcements in a railway station.... Read more... |
Album: Lisa O'Neill - All of This Is ChanceWednesday, 01 February 2023
Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds and John Francis Flynn, all of them putting their albums out on Rough Trade, which makes the venerable English Indie... Read more... |
Celtic Connections: Juliette Lemoine, Orchestral Qawwali Project review - fusion of myriad musical traditionsWednesday, 25 January 2023
In full force again for 2023, Scotland’s premier folk music festival Celtic Connections is back with its signature strand of blending and sharing musical traditions. On Saturday, emerging Scottish folk cellist Juliette Lemoine gave a superb early... Read more... |
'Time Out of Mind' Revisited - a deep focus take on classic DylanTuesday, 24 January 2023
The 1997 release of Time Out of Mind was the resurrection of an artist who appeared to have wandered off the reservation some years before, lost in transit on his Never Ending Tour, trailed by an army of "Bobcats" who followed him for show after... Read more... |
Album: Juni Habel - CarvingsFriday, 06 January 2023
Carvings is recorded so it sounds as if Juni Habel is adjacent to the listener’s ear. The Norwegian singer-songwriter may as well be inches away. Such intimacy can be disconcerting, especially as Carvings evokes a reflective melancholy. Its eight... Read more... |
Albums of the Year 2022: Dina Ögon - Dina ÖgonFriday, 30 December 2022
Some of what’s nourishing the debut album by Sweden’s Dina Ögon is evident. A Bossa Nova jazz-pop essence evokes Brazil’s Quarteto em Cy. There’s a trip-hop undertow. Vocal lines bring to mind Free Design. Less easy to pinpoint is a melodic... Read more... |
