Bill Jones: Wonderful Fairytale
Her skilled piano playing is like the album’s life-blood, and the quiet, but supportive, voice of her accordion, occasionally coming to the fore, reminds us that Bill is just as accomplished an instrumentalist as she is a singer. Add to this her already established skill as a song writer and it’s clear that Bill’s return to professional music is likely to have just as much an impact as her early work did. Wonderful Fairytale sees Bill Jones return in excellent form, with an exceptional album that fulfils the promise of her early career, and confirms that this gifted performer still has so much to offer.
Bird in the Belly: Neighbours and Sisters
Beautifully produced by Pryor, Neighbours And Sisters is the work of a talented and varied quartet expanding their range. They can be cosmopolitan in one breath, ethereal in the next. Their songs can be sad and yearning or darkly humorous. Their arrangements can sound, almost at once, ancient and startlingly contemporary. The rapid evolution of Bird In The Belly into one of our finest folk acts is a joy to behold.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy: I Made a Place
Under the guise of Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Will Oldham has crafted a disc that sounds comfortable and warm while dealing with the uncertainty of what lies ahead. The here and now is all we have at the end of the day, and that’s more than enough.
Brìghde Chaimbeul: The Reeling
Brìghde Chaimbeul’s debut album The Reeling, released on the new River Lea label, is every bit as special in its own atmospheric way as its recent launch at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections.
The album is as potent as anything written by Buffy Sainte-Marie and deserves to be acclaimed up there alongside Tori Amos’s Scarlet’s Walk album, Dave Matthews’s Don’t Drink The Water, Elton John’s Indian Sunset and Robert Plant’s New World, just a few of the mere handful of songs by non-Native Americans that have sought to expose the injustices inflicted on the First Nation.
C Joynes & The Furlong Bray: The Borametz Tree
…this is an album that takes you on a multi-paced and multi-cultured journey that is utterly idiosyncratic; at times dense in its structure and challenging in its rhythm, at others gentle and spare. As with all of Joynes’ work, solo or collaborative, it is layered and intelligent, finding art and inspiration from many places. This particular result is something that really should be heard.
Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh and Thomas Bartlett: S/T
If these two remarkable musicians were brought together by coincidence, then they are bound by a shared sense of wonder at the possibilities of instrumental and improvised folk music. They have created an album that is seductively dreamlike but sometimes sad, layered like a palimpsest but accessible on every one of those layers. It is unlikely you will hear a better instrumental album this year.
Catherine Rudie: The Möbius Kiss
Listening to The Möbius Kiss is a deliciously unnerving experience. Catherine Rudie’s ability to create vivid moods from often sparse ingredients is a rare gift – she can make you feel as if you inhabit the dream-spaces of these songs, and then return you to the real world with a bump. Often, it is necessary to stop and remind yourself that this is a debut album, such is the quality of these songs and the command that Rudie has over them. She has combined the traditional and the contemporary in a way that feels entirely fresh, and more importantly, she has reminded us that creativity is a constant in a world defined by its fluctuations and vacillations.
Charles Rumback & Ryley Walker: Little Common Twist
If all of these sonic costume changes sound like a muddled album then fear not, because Little Common Twist is a very skilfully played and arranged piece of work, which balances its many flavours like an accomplished chef. It’s brilliant and once the waves of reverberating electric guitar and the addictive drumbeat of album closer ‘Worn and Held’ fade into a low tidal drone, you will want to go back to the beginning and experience the whole thing again.