Courtney Marie Andrews: Old Flowers
On Old Flowers, the latest offering from Courtney Marie Andrews, the instrumentation is intimate and sparse, reflecting songs that document the end of a nine-year relationship and the process of recovery.
…unquestionably one of her best, one which, in its journey from wreckage to rebirth, it reaches deep into what Yeats termed the rag and bone shop of the heart, and finds treasure within.
Cunning Folk: A Casual Invocation
Hoyle is something of a maverick voice in the British folk scene, perhaps even an iconoclast, and to the untrained ear, it might seem like these wild and beguiling songs fly in the face of our notions of traditional folk music. But his music connects with the side of our nature that revels in all things transformative, atavistic and pagan. It shows that we are all capable of magical thinking. This is folk music at its most transcendent, an antidote to the banal and a gateway to the weird.
Cynefin: Dilyn Afon (Following A River)
If you are a listener who enjoys plenty of context and a rich sense of place and history to an album, this highly accomplished project from West Wales native Owen Shiers, who creates under his Cynefin name, a palimpsest of a Welsh word meaning animals’ trails in hillsides and the sense of familiarity and belonging, will absolutely delight. The album is packaged beautifully with an introduction by Shiers and extensive notes on each traditional song and tune in Welsh and English. For a debut piece, this is a luxurious and high-quality product that is a good indication of the level of thought, passion and apparent dedication that has gone into its creation.
It is a journey piece of pure and utterly beautiful music and singing in the most generous of album packages and I implore you all to buy it.
Damien Jurado: What’s New, Tomboy?
There is a certain languid crunch about the drums and electric guitars that introduce Birds Tricked Into The Trees, the opening track from What’s New, Tomboy? The new album from Seattle-born singer-songwriter Damien Jurado is defined by a laid-back kind of determination. Music that knows where it wants to go, and how to get there, but isn’t averse to a bit of exploration along the way. It is the sound of an artist confident in his own ability, and in Jurado’s case is not misplaced, although it has been hard-earned.
Right now songs are acting as documents of possibility and aide-memoires of a time when we could connect with each other properly. Jurado is the perfect songwriter for this. He is wistful without ever wallowing in nostalgia, and he balances heartbreak with hope in a way that few artists can. From the subtle Hammond shimmer of its first track to the close-up chord changes and steady accumulation of lyrical detail of Frankie, the brilliant closer, What’s New, Tomboy? represents some of his finest work to date.
Darlingside: Fish Pond Fish
For a four-piece band whose shtick is gathering around the same microphone to sing and strum, the pandemic and lockdown must have hit pretty hard. But the Boston-based indie/folk band Darlingside have turned adversity into adventure and separation into sensation. This is an album for our times because it’s an album for all times.
…the album is a rallying cry to…dwell, to exist and revel in the moment. But not in a hedonistic way, in an acceptance that your being is a part of something superior. And something worth fighting for. It’s hard to describe the effect of the album. Returning to the earlier analogy, a witness can only hint at the vastness and power of the ocean. To feel it, you’ve got to dive in.
Darren Hayman: Home Time
Home Time is an album about endings, but also about things that never end. Its songs concern the ends of relationships, a fact which might have some listeners grasping at comparisons between this album and Hayman’s early work with Hefner, particularly the wonderful, self-contained cycle of intimacy and loss that was The Fidelity Wars. It’s natural to want our favourite artists to come full circle, to return to the beloved themes of old. But Hayman, as anyone who has followed his solo career will know, is about more than just a couple of great indie records. He is one of our most restless and questing songwriters. He has recorded albums about the 17th century Essex witch trials, lidos, and the moon landings. So when he records a new collection of songs that ostensibly explore an old theme, you can be sure that he will approach it from a new angle.
Circularity, repetition, disappointment, hope and the occasional abrupt ending. We put up with these things in life, and we are impressed when they are reflected in art. Twenty-one years ago Hefner released one of the finest break-up and make-up albums of its era. To say that Hayman has done it again may be a bit reductive – in no sense at all is this a nostalgia trip, quite the opposite in fact – but nonetheless, this is one of the finest records of a consistently brilliant and varied solo career.
David A Jaycock: Murder, and the Birds
David A. Jaycock has long been something of an outlier, his music skirting the periphery of traditional folk, hauntology and the whimsy of 1970s English baroque pop. Too conceptual to be trad, too tuneful to be avant-garde, his is a music of edgelands, situated somewhere between David Tibet and Robyn Hitchcock.
His music exists both inside and outside of the English tradition. The undeniably beautiful songs of Murder, And The Birds relish the ugly and the odd, and aren’t afraid to document the violence of our history. Jaycock is a master of carefully managed contradictions and a true original.
David Keenan: A Beginner’s Guide To Bravery
Championed by Glen Hansard, Hozier and Gary Lightbody, hailing from Dundalk in County Louth, halfway between Dublin and Belfast, Keenan has been spoken of in terms of Van Morrison, Tim Buckley, and Samuel Beckett (although his musical epiphany was The La’s), his debut album proving him to be a distinctive new voice, literally and figuratively, his mythologies born from the streets and people of his hometown.
Infused with the soul of the great Irish writers and such visionary boho barroom bards as Waits, Morrison, Burroughs or Bukowski, it’s surely unlike any other album you’ll hear this year, the breathtaking arrival of a luminous talent.
Diana Jones: Song To A Refugee
Nina Simone famously said that it was ‘an artist’s duty to reflect the times’, which of course she did in her inimitable and formidable way. Her own career, and that of many others, illustrates that it isn’t possible for most to maintain a consistent focus on the issues of the day, but what Diana Jones new album, Song To A Refugee, shows us is just how powerful the result can be when an artist is deeply moved to respond to the way some human beings are being demonised and mistreated.
I found myself listening intently to every single word in a way that rarely happens; there is instantly something fully captivating about Jones’s singing.
Dirk Powell: When I Wait For You
Dirk Powell has been beavering away on the US roots scene for the best part of three decades. Initially noted for his skill with fiddle and banjo he’s broadened into a true multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, composer, recording engineer, arranger, producer. His skill set seems to know no bounds and is much in demand, collaborating with both musicians and film directors. This collection of his own music has been keenly anticipated.
It will entertain you, for sure, but will also gently pull you into a world of music so absorbing it could only come from that rare combination of technical brilliance and joy of collaboration that Dirk Powell has in abundance.