This week’s Folk Show features new and forthcoming releases, including our Artist of the Month, The Furrow Collective, as well as tracks from two of our Featured Albums of the Month, courtesy of Georgia Shackleton and Honey And The Bear.
Music Played
Spell Songs – Charm On, Goldfinch (Live) – Bandcamp
A Winter Union – Snowin’ On Raton – Bandcamp
Georgia Shackleton – Rambling Robin – Bandcamp
The Furrow Collective – Every Day is Three – Bandcamp
Holly & The Reivers – In Dublin’s Fair City – Birnam CD Shop
Jim Moray – Lord Douglas – Bandcamp
Nick Hart & Tom Moore – The Raggle Taggle Gypsies – Bandcamp
Northern Resonance – Kansas City
Auka – Getaway – Bandcamp
Hirondelle – Tina’s Song – Bandcamp
Honey And The Bear – 5500 Miles – buy direct from the artist
Trond Kallevåg – Amerikalinjen – Bandcamp
Abigail Lapell – Suo Gân (Welsh Lullaby) – Bandcamp
Siger – Downhill Drifters – buy direct from the artist
Show Notes
Recently reviewed by Fiona, the show opens with a track from Gift of Light, the new live album from Spell Songs, an album that “is characterised by an uplifting vitality which soothes the soul, demonstrating the magic that results from combining live music with art and literature and representing collaborative music-making at its very finest.”
A Winter Union follow with a festive offering from their first studio album in seven years, ‘Sooner After Solstice’, reviewed here.
Harry’s Seagull is the debut solo album from Georgia Shackleton, who demonstrates how old songs sung with affection and skill can sparkle like new. Thomas Blake described the album as being light as a gull’s feather but flush with ideas: it’s one of the freshest and most appealing folk albums of the year.
Rambling Robin was recorded by both Peter Bellamy and Christy Moore in the 1970s. Shackleton adapts Bellamy’s version to wonderful effect: it is brisk and sprightly, zipping through six verses in less than a minute and a half, the plucked fiddle providing an oddly elegant spikiness.
The Furrow Collective (Rachel Newton, Alasdair Roberts, Lucy Farrell and Emily Portman) are our Artists of the Month, and you can read our recent interview with them here. You can also read our album review of their new album, We Know By The Moon (27th November via Hudson Records), here.
It would be easy to come out with a cliche about the Furrow Collective being greater than the sum of their parts, but that would be doing a disservice to their individual talents. But what does happen when the four of them come together is something different: they have quietly radical ways of reworking familiar songs and a remarkable collective instinct for introducing us to ones that are less well-known. They are simply one of the most formidable combinations of musicians in today’s folk music scene, and in We Know by the Moon, they have created one of the year’s outstanding albums.
Three Galleys (review coming soon) is the debut album from Newcastle trio Holly & the Reivers. Though firmly rooted in the folk song tradition, the trio has a signature sound that comes from being influenced by old time music, supernatural murder ballads, folk horror cinema and political songs. The trio features Holly Clarke (Voice /Guitar), Merle Harbron (Voice/ Fiddle) and Bertie Armstrong (Voice/Banjo).
Jim Moray releases his new album Beflean tomorrow (24th November). Fiona reviewed the album earlier today, read it here, and notes: Moray’s talent lies not only in writing outstanding new tunes for old stories but also in telling new stories with just as much power, raw emotion, and musical ingenuity.
Nick Hart and Tom Moore released their first duo album ‘The Colour of Amber‘ yesterday (22nd November).
The highly anticipated album showcases their interpretations of many traditional songs and tunes. The unusual combination of Tom’s viola and Nick’s tenor viol, augmented by drones and basses from an old church harmonium, creates a rich and fascinating set of textures.
Northern Resonance are a Scandinavian string trio (Anna Ekborg Hans-Ers, Petrus Dillner, and Jerker Hans-Ers) that take newly composed folk music into enormous soundscapes. With viola d’amore, hardanger fiddle and nyckelharpa, they let Scandinavian music meet explosive rhythms and grand chamber-like arrangements that takes folk music in a new direction. All members are highly skilled and accomplished musicians rooted in traditional music.
Their debut album was released in 2020 and was nominated for a Swedish Grammy. They will release their second album, Vision of Three, on 12th January.
Also released today is Sheffield-based Auka’s ‘Wild Waters’ – a clarion call to both enjoy and protect nature – inspired and fuelled by a deep love for rewilding and the Right to Roam movements. Read it here.
Set for release in January 2024, the self-titled ‘Hirondelle’ (French for ‘swallow’) is inspired by the free flight of the swallow from the heartlands of Africa to the Mediterranean and beyond to the fringes of the Atlantic islands of Britain and Ireland and back again. This multi-national band is a collaborative project between English alt-folk sibling duo The Brothers Gillespie (guitar and vocals), classical group Trio Mythos comprising viola player and composer/ arranger Sophie Renshaw (London Mozart Players), violinist Lucy Russell (Fitzwilliam Quartet) and cellist Ruth Philips as well as the groundbreaking Provençal dialect polyphonic trio Tant Que Li Siam (Damien Toumi,(voice and bendir), Marie-Madeleine Martinet, (voice, saggattes, and tamburrello) and Mario Leccia, (voice, zarb, tamburrello and daf)) who are steeped in the rich and diverse musical languages of Occitan.
East Anglian duo Lucy and Jon Hart, aka Honey And The Bear‘s “Away Beyond the Fret” is a Featured Album of the Month (reviewed here by Danny) – a remarkable album, especially for capturing profound personal moments alongside folklore, history, nature, superstition, and awe-inspiring tales. They live it like they sing it, with open minds, ears and hearts.
Out now on Hubro, on Amerikabåten, the guitarist and composer Trond Kallevåg sets sail and explores the stories and mystique of American music and culture. With a cinematic quality reminiscent of Ry Cooder and Bill Frisell, it draws inspiration from the hundreds of thousands of Norwegians who embarked on transformative journeys across the vast ocean. To bring his stories to life, Trond has assembled a stellar ensemble of esteemed young Norwegian musicians, including Selma French, Daniela Reyes, Håkon Aase, Jo Berger Myhre, and Ola Øverby…all revered figures in today’s vibrant Norwegian music scene.
Lullabies is the latest offering from Abigail Lapell (reviewed here by Mark) – as noted by Mark in his review: The sparse nature of the arrangements on this album, which are largely restricted to finger-picked guitar, doesn’t detract from the quality of the material on show here. Lapell is also blessed with a deeply expressive and mellifluous alto that has drawn not unfair comparisons to the likes of Natalie Merchant, Linda Thompson, Sandy Denny, and Gillian Welch.
Siger are Flemish traditional music siblings Hartwin & Ward Dhoore. With When We Fly, their second album, “the brothers of Siger celebrate the return of international touring, new adventures abroad and inspiring moments on the road.”
Enjoy.