She says that she wanted to share that she made it out of her own thunderstorm. I guess she’s looked at clouds from both sides now, producing an album that shimmers and glows with a warmth and emotional intimacy that’s impossible to resist.
Oliver Cherer: I Feel Nothing Most Days
The quiet magic of I Feel Nothing Most Days is difficult to pin down, but in that essential unknowability, that sense of mystery, lies some of its appeal. In some ways it is a paradox: it reaches into the past and examines human memory but never feels anything other than thrillingly current. The songs seem half-remembered, like dreams, but are never less than perfectly crafted, and the album hangs together as a whole artistic statement despite the variety of Cherer’s songwriting. And despite its lengthy gestation, it feels like an instant, a snapshot of a rainy afternoon, slightly blurred, mysterious and beautiful.
Our Native Daughters: Songs Of Our Native Daughters
Songs of Our Native Daughters is a cultural landmark both for these extraordinary musicians and hopefully for others inspired by them, as well as those of us fortunate enough to hear their work.
With ‘Flux’, Rachel Dadd has created a work that reveals a structured simplicity woven from a cloth of rich and complex yarns. Her voice may appear soft and fragile, but the songs are fuelled with matriarchal purpose and a relentless desire for justice. ‘Flux’ takes tide and time as its theme, but uses it ferociously to highlight the inequality and selfishness that we have introduced into our world. This is surely her most potent work to date.
With insightful liner notes, beautifully packaged with a perfectly apt painting from Ruth Brownlee gracing its cover, The Portage is more than wonderful music played by masters of their instrument; it is a recording that seems to have finely judged every aspect of its creation and the result is something truly special. At points haunting, at others carefree and light, this is powerful and evocative music that is invigorating, bewitching and beautiful.
Red River Dialect – Abundance Welcoming Ghosts
It’s not often that a band comes along and over the course of nine songs both plays to the tradition and stands it on its ear. Yet with Abundance Welcoming Ghosts Red River Dialect has taken the challenge of playing with reckless abandon to heart, generating an album that stands on the shoulder of giants showing no fear.
Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi: There Is No Other
The impeccable pairing of Turrisi and Giddens is something few would have foreseen, yet should not be overlooked. This is music at its most honest and primal, you can almost feel the walls of the studio shaking. Producer Joe Henry’s touch is invisible, which is why he’s one of the greats. Giddens must be a sponge, able to soak up music and song from all over the world but what is beyond me is how she still delivers in a way that is pure and true to her roots. Rhiannon Giddens is the absolute real deal and so is this album.
To understand what this album actually means it is perhaps necessary to consider the fundamental aspects of its sound: this is (at times) a pop album, and Dawson’s move to embrace the pop idiom is not, or not always, an ironic one, meant to hold a gaudy and frivolous mirror up to dark and dour times. On the contrary, it is a sincere appeal to optimism, and above all else, sincerity is Dawson’s calling card. This is art shorn of artifice, pop against populism, and it just so happens to be one of the defining statements of our times.
Rob Harbron, one of our most prized English concertina players has finally found time to craft his solo debut album. Made in the simplest way, Meanders is exactly what you would wish for, which is beautiful pieces of music performed with the utmost skill by a master of his instrument.
Rowan Rheingans: The Lines We Draw Together
The Lines We Draw Together seems to revel in contradictions. It is an album for our times, but steeped in history. Its poetry is not short on intellectual rigour, but its message is one of earthy wisdom and simplicity. It confronts pain and talks of the possibility of a better world. But Rheingans’ songs are good enough and big-hearted enough to accommodate all these contradictions. It feels like an important album, an album that is full of life.