singer-songwriters
Thomas H. Green
It’s not every artist who performs “living funerals” along the way as she tours. Then again, American singer Emily Cross is far from the average rocker. Cross Record was previously Cross and her husband Dan Duszynski, who were also both in the slowcore indie “supergroup” Loma. However, this third Cross Record album was made solo, after a move to Mexico following her divorce, also alongside newfound sobriety. It is a more direct, thoughtful creature than its predecessors, yet musically even more floaty and spectral.The default setting for the album is hazy tone music speckled with twinkling Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The first thing you notice about Guesswork is the sound. Or rather, what's missing: there are none of the usual jangly guitars. No trusty Rickenbackers. Instead, the singer-songwriter offers up a palette of synthesisers and drum machines. For those who grew up listening to his Eighties' classic, Rattlesnakes, it can be a little disorientating.Scratch beneath the surface, though, and things really aren't so different. Cole's cracked voice is still gloriously soulful and his words continue to ruminate on life's unfolding saga. Unsurprisingly now, at 58, the story has moved on. Read more ...
Katie Colombus
It’s a rare thing that musicians sound better live than they do on Spotify. But Florence Welch sings a note perfect set – even when jumping up and down like a pogo stick, whirling and spinning, or sprinting along the front of the stage to meet fans.Shining with androgynous, enigmatic beauty, she opens with the dramatic “June”, the line “hold on to each other” sung with gravitas as she stands on a tree-cloaked stage beneath the open sky. It’s a message that resonates from the onset – you can feel it, the connection with her hometown audience – the same way Flo seems to be feeling the crowd Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On “Truth in the Wild”, Erin Birgy sings “Never smother the mystical song that rests deep inside you.” Accordingly, its parent album Dolphine confirms she has no intention of suppressing her vision. Conceptually, the 11 compositions are linked by the premise a being evolved in parallel with humans after our distant ancestors left the oceans – the sub-aqua “dolphine”. The inspiration appears to be that spirits survive after death. Perhaps the cover's medical ultrasound image relates to this?The haunting Dolphine is US singer-songwriter Birgy’s fourth album as Mega Bog. It opens with “For the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“When I was a small boy growing up in the south of England,” says Frank Turner - pausing just long enough for the anticipated good-natured jeering from the Scottish crowd - “I dreamed of playing the legendary King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut.”It may sound disingenuous - it’s certainly not the first time that Turner, who barely six months ago sold almost 10 times as many tickets to sell out Glasgow’s O2 Academy, has played the city’s most storied venue - but the hollers in response are of a crowd who are in on the joke. This hastily-arranged stop filling in for a cancelled festival date is a rare chance Read more ...
Liz Thomson
“He was an outsider, a purveyor of truth”, Sarah Jane Morris has said of John Martyn, whose rackety life came to a tragically premature conclusion in 2009, when he was just 60. He was a key figure on the British folk scene, and his distinctive fusion of folk and blues quickly led him into the realms of jazz. A brilliant finger-picking guitarist in a style often referred to as folk baroque, Martyn was also an early experimenter with the fuzzbox and other gizmos, and while his own hero was Davey Graham, Martyn’s admirers came from across the musical spectrum and included Mike Harding and David Read more ...
Barney Harsent
On his last album, 2017’s acclaimed The Possum in the Driveway, singer-songwriter Mark Mulcahy presented a collection that seemed almost anthological – a series of vignettes each with a strong sense of individual identity, sewn together in a pin-perfect patchwork by Mulcahy’s distinctive tones. With The Gus, Mulcahy has taken his narrative approach forward, apparently inspired by the short stories of American writer George Saunders. His renewed focus lends a sharp sense of authorial voice to the album and the result is a more contained and structured piece. Mulcahy’s success Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Eight albums in, you can imagine why a singer-songwriter in the confessional vein of Ingrid Michaelson might be ready to look elsewhere for inspiration - and inspiration for new album Stranger Songs came from a curious place. Each of the album’s 11 tracks (Eleven, get it?) was inspired by Netflix’s Eighties-set sci-fi/horror smash Stranger Things - but don’t expect too radical a departure, because Stranger Songs gets its kicks from the series’ more universal themes of first love, friendship and teenage alienation rather than mysterious laboratories, monsters or The Upside Down.Opening track “ Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Endlessly gigging Northern Irish performer Foy Vance's profile first rocketed after touring with fellow singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran. The pair became pals, Vance went onto support the likes of Elton John, and signed to Sheeran’s Gingerbread Man Records. His fourth album is the first of a themed couple paying tribute to the southern US roots of popular music (the other will hail from Sam Phillips Studios in Memphis). How enjoyable it is depends largely on how the listener feels about what music writer Simon Reynolds terms “retro-mania”.Muscle Shoals Studios in Alabama (and before that FAME Read more ...
Katie Colombus
In a post Ed Sheeran world, with a glut of acoustic singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi, Tom Walker or Odell, James Bay, Jack Savoretti – all of whom are big on poignantly penned balladry, phonic flair and harmonious melody – is there room for another young male artist to make waves in the indi-folk arena?Spotify seems to think so – 6 million streams and counting of singles from Charlie Cunningham’s recently released second album Permanent Way (and 165 million for his first album Lines in 2017) would indicate something special about his particular sonic concept.There’s certainly Read more ...
peter.quinn
On one level it’s a paean to stylistic pluralism, on another it’s a love letter to his wife. First and foremost, though, Taller sees Jamie Cullum staking out new ground as a singer-songwriter, adeptly aided by his long-time collaborator and friend – the conductor, arranger, multi-instrumentalist and producer, Troy Miller.Propelled by a tight horn chart, strings, Miller’s crisp backbeat, plus a backing chorus that includes the stellar vocal talents of Brendan Reilly, LaDonna Harley Peters, Sharlene Hector, Sumudu Jayatilka, Xan Blacq and more, the title track’s compelling drop-out point at the Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
“I appreciate the irony of me singing this in my mum jeans,” says Emmy The Great, whose five-month-old is travelling with her on this tour, before playing “We Almost Had a Baby”. Despite its jaunty little riff the song, from her 10-year-old debut album, is a desperately sad one, about a pregnancy scare.Emma-Lee Moss was in her early 20s when she wrote the songs that would become First Love and the record is a time capsule packed with broken hearts, dramatic short stories, pop culture references and the intense, deep love for this person, and that song, that feels all-consuming in one’s youth Read more ...