Despite listening to what felt like a mountain of music over the past year, some albums stood out for me and I found myself often returning to them again during the evening. The unordered list below represents my personal top 100 albums that I’ve enjoyed the most over 2023. It’s a diverse list that reflects the breadth of music coverage on Folk Radio and in which you may also find some new musical discoveries.
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Top 100 Folk & Alternative Albums of 2023
These are unranked, so just dig in, enjoy and hopefully discover some new music along the way. Most of the blurb are excerpts from reviews – clicking on the title will, in most cases, take you to the album review, but not all albums listed here made it to the review (it’s just not possible to review every album) but in most cases, those that didn’t were featured in some way – either in a news piece or in one of the many Mixtapes and playlists.
There will be a separate list for Live Albums, Compilations, Reissues and EPs.
Bandcamp links are included – we encourage you to support the artists we’ve championed over 2023.
Alasdair Roberts – Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall
…regardless of whether he is writing his own songs, working on those of other artists, or interpreting traditional material, his work has an overarching humanity, an intelligent and deep engagement with the world that shines through even on supernatural or fantastical songs like Grief In The Kitchen’s spooky closer The Holland Handkerchief. He may record a great deal of music, but the quality control is astoundingly high, and nearly three decades into his career, that quality shows no sign of letting up.
Maxine Funke – River Said
Maxine Funke’s output over the last few years has been consistently outstanding, and River Said shows her at her best and at her most varied. These are songs that gently demand attention and longer compositions that are profound, moving and mysterious all at once.
Hack-Poets Guild – Blackletter Garland
Blackletter Garland is highly impressive in many ways. It is both a wonderful collection of individual folk songs by three of our finest performers and an example of what can be achieved when those people share their skills. As such, it is more than the sum of its parts. It’s tempting to say that this is a blueprint for how folk music should be made, but prescriptive statements like that are narrow and limiting, and Blackletter Garland is the opposite of that. It shows many possible futures of folk music, all of them varied and vibrant.
ØXN – CYRM
The more experimental members of Dublin’s vibrant folk scene have been on blistering form this year. It is the sheer ambitiousness of ØXN, a quartet featuring Lankum’s Radie Peat along with singer/songwriter/composer Katie Kim, Eleanor Myler of kraut-shoegazers Percolator, and producer/engineer/multi-instrumentalist John ‘Spud’ Murphy, and their unwillingness to conform in any way to stereotypes that make them something of an outlier, even in a scene that is open to experimental music. It also makes them one of the most vital acts in that (or any) scene. This uncompromising debut album is like a monolith looming through fog.
Brigid Mae Power – Dream from the Deep Well
On Dream From The Deep Well, Brigid Mae Power has created a piece of art that resonates timelessly on a mythic level. In spite of or perhaps because of this, it is also a highly personal piece of art, brimming with the joy and sadness that hides in plain sight, in the minutiae of everyday life.
Emma Tricca – Aspirin Sun
It might be an album that captures change in its moment of occurring, but one thing hasn’t changed: Tricca is still one of our most valuable and interesting songwriters, capable of strange and beautiful sonic flights of fancy and unexpected lyrical turns. Aspirin Sun is her best yet.
John Francis Flynn – Look Over The Wall, See The Sky
Look Over the Wall, See the Sky is also an album that explores freedom of movement and, by extension, the breaking down of borders. Its title refers to a world beyond, a dream of freedom. It’s easy enough to draw parallels between Flynn’s boundary-breaking approach to music and the concepts he espouses. Easy and probably correct. And Flynn goes even further: there is something refreshingly, vividly utopian behind the darkness in these songs. If there were any doubts as to whether traditional songs can still be sharply meaningful in a contemporary musical setting, this album lays them to rest.
Sally Anne Morgan – Carrying
This awareness of the environment and the earth permeates Carrying. Still, the final track, Song for Arthur, is more of a declaration of love and protection for the newborn child, which is the overriding theme of this album. An acoustic piece (immediately lending a more innocent edge to the music), the tune comes in like a soothing lullaby, with sweeps of fiddle blending with a relaxed picked guitar line. Ending a set full of music that veers from uneasy, with reverb and pulsing electric guitars, to spare and organic, the gorgeous, imperfect bowed notes that accompany Sally Anne’s unambiguous lines of adoration in the second half of the song are somehow reassuring. In a world full of perils, both natural and unnatural, love can surely overcome all.
Adele H – Impermanence
Adele Pappalardo’s greatest asset is her voice: inimitable, malleable, dripping with passion and personality. The transition to piano-based songs on Impermanence has allowed that voice to flourish, which in turn has opened up new and intensely personal ways of writing and presenting songs. The resulting album transcends its varied influences and becomes a wonderful and, at times, cathartic work of art, brimming with confidence and bursting with important questions about womanhood, metaphysics and music.
Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay – Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay
Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay is an album that demonstrates the musical prowess and creativity of these two important guitarists of the UK scene. The music across twelve tracks is diverse and dynamic, ebbing and flowing like a river and evoking nature and the outdoors wonderfully, a particular strength of both players. Assured in its composition and immaculate in its execution, this one is a must.
James & The Giants – James & The Giants
James & The Giants might just be his most congenial work yet, veering damn close to all-round family entertainment. Toth offers sober musings for late-night booze hounds, with a wry literacy that echoes the late David McComb (The Triffids) and David Berman (Silver Jews). …Melancholy songs are so often the most emotionally honest. On this outstanding set, Toth brings to light his own humility and frailty, while asking us to take stock of our own.
Xylouris White – The Forest in Me
As Glenn said: I absolutely love The Forest in Me; it smacks of confidence and creativity and is happy to shift expectations and deliver a sound so different to previous albums while keeping its core structure of lute and drums present. Each song surprises and leaves you wanting more, and at thirty minutes long, it is just too tempting to spin the thing again. I’ve enjoyed this duo (trio?) since Goats came along in 2014, but this short, sharp and dynamic project is the one I’ve been waiting for.
Alice Gerrard – Sun to Sun
Despite the seriousness of its subjects, wit and warmth pervade every minute of Sun To Sun, from the lighthearted How Now Brown Cow and the brisk, banjo and fiddle-led instrumental December Daisy to the heart-stirring harmonies of Remember Us. It’s an album that acts both as a tonic and a kick in the pants: it reminds us of the enduring place of protest in folk music but also of the importance of humour and heart in life as well as in art. Sun To Sun is a career-high from a musician who has helped shape the landscape of American folk music.
Rónán Ó Snodaigh & Myles O’Reilly – The Beautiful Road
Sometimes collaborations come about when two very different and very individual orbits collide with unexpected chemistry, and sometimes it happens that a pair of artists seem so well-suited to each other’s work that it almost comes as a surprise to learn that they haven’t been creating music together for years. Either instance can produce valid and sometimes breathtaking results, but Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Myles O’Reilly’s work seems to fall into the second camp. They have crafted a collection that works on multiple levels at once: The Beautiful Road is a calmative, a sonic balm in times of literal and metaphorical noise, but also a reminder of the verve and the life that can still exist in music. It’s an exceptional feat.
James Yorkston, Nina Persson and the Second Hand Orchestra – The Great White Sea Eagle
While The Great White Sea Eagle shares much with Yorkston’s previous album, it somehow manages to hit harder on an emotional and visceral level. This may be in part down to Persson’s involvement or Yorkston’s constant evolution and maturation as a songwriter. A new Yorkston album is always a bracing experience, this one more so than most. It’s the musical equivalent of standing in an abandoned cottage, its doors open to the elements, as the benevolent and curious ghosts of ancient birds offer advice from the rafters.
P.G. Six – Murmurs & Whispers
Although there have only been six P.G. Six albums over a twenty-two-year period, that comparatively small body of work nonetheless provides a compelling, consistent and, in a way, definitive snapshot of the psych-folk genre. Rather than an outlier, Gubler is a founding father who, along with the likes of Will Oldham and Ben Chasny, is keeping the New Weird America flame alive. Those of us lucky enough to have been in at the start will always consume anything he releases with relish, but Murmurs & Whispers also works as a starting point for the uninitiated. It is as good as anything he has released over those two-and-a-bit decades: a nuanced, enthralling work from a brilliant songwriter who seems to be hitting another career peak.
Bobby Lee – Endless Skyways
For Sheffield-born Bobby Lee’s third studio album and second for Tompkins Square, he has reverted to the full band set-up of his debut after playing all of the instruments on 2021’s Origin Myths. A song that might handily illustrate the difference between Myths and Endless Skyways is Impregnated by Drops of Rainbow, a stark and skeletal two-minute piece on the former that is revisited here and given a makeover that sees it clock up an extra five minutes of song time. The new guise brings in bassist Mark Armstrong, who cuts a deep groove with smooth notes that drummer Ian McCutcheon matches with solid, unwavering playing. Alongside this mesmerising section, Lee’s questing guitar slowly reaches further and is joined by Joe Harvey-Whyte’s glistening pedal steel. The original tune is still there, but this confident, exploratory new design sums up the flavour of Endless Skyways. …A huge step forward from Bobby Lee, Endless Skyways is a bold, dramatic and sensitive collaboration between the guitarist and his intuitive band. An exciting and fascinating piece of work.
Dominique Fils-Aimé – Our Roots Run Deep
We’re all a multitude of voices within ourselves, believes Dominique Fils-Aimé. An inspiring Montreal artist who composes orally, she works with raw vocal materials to build sirenic layers within her songs. Our Roots Run Deep is her fourth album, following a themed trilogy which explored the history of African-American music. …What comes to the surface in times of crisis, whether social or personal? Files-Aimé implies that spiritual survival is just as urgent as physical endurance. She offers a humanist side to healing where mind, soul and body connect to word, rhythm and imagery. An album that dreams in lush colours, Our Roots Run Deep is a stunning work of folk-magic and fellowship.
Ida Wenøe – Undersea
Written in solitude on the Jutland coast, with just the ocean for company, the Danish Singer and Songwriter Ida Wenøe describes her third album as “about all those emotions your try to bury deep, that always find their way to the surface whether you like it or not”. The shifting nature of the ocean, at times calm, at others wild and dangerous, informs the songs, her gentle Americana-flavoured folk noir augmented with contributions from Scottish players Hal Parfitt-Murray on strings and Samantha Whates on flute and backing vocals. …An album to be experienced in tranquillity, a musical Reiki for the soul that offers a view of life that, like the ocean, can be often filled with mystery and darkness, but “when the light hits its surface, it can be the most golden thing existing”. Immerse yourself.
Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening – Cloud Horizons
Aptly described as ‘Ancient Northumbrian Futurism’, Kathryn Tickell and The Darkening’s Cloud Horizons is electrifying and incredibly captivating. Tantamount here too, is a deep sense of experimentation, fluidity, and the sheer thrill of creating new sounds and songs. Despite a mood of wildness, the band are incredibly tight, and Cloud Horizons is a stimulating, enthusiastically optimistic, and thoroughly rewarding listening experience. In capturing a sound that effortlessly conjures the past whilst simultaneously referencing the present and future, Tickell and the Darkening have created a rather unique and striking soundscape.
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You
Oldham has always been adept at locating metaphysical themes in the natural world, and he works this particular magic all over Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. Perhaps best of all is the woozy country shimmer of closer Good Morning, Popocatépetl with its dawn-haze of organ. Whereas this is very recognisably a Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album, it is also a calculated, if slight, departure. These songs have a life-affirming quality to them, a willingness to exist in the present, and as a result, this is one of Oldham’s most rewarding albums.
Erlend Apneseth Trio & Maja S. K. Ratkje – Collage
The relationship between Nordic traditional music and the broader churches of experimental composition and free jazz has shifted somewhat since Erlend Apneseth and his Trio first started making albums for Norway’s influential Hubro label. Given the consistently high quality of those albums and the critical acclaim they have attracted, it’s no great leap to suggest that Apneseth has had an important part to play in that shift. It is a movement away from virtuosity for its own sake and towards a more holistic and collaborative approach to music making, one that doesn’t celebrate the past or the future independently of each other, but sees the two as part of a continuum. This is exemplified by a keen affinity with the natural world, a patient but never dull attitude to recording that seems to recognise music as a kind of palpable measure of deep time.. …the closing track, Atterklang, feels like an extended exhalation, as if the listener is only now being released from some darkly glimmering cave. The strings become sedate; the heartbeat slows. You realise, despite the improvisatory fabric of Collage, just how much control the album’s creators are able to exert over mood and timbre and all-round listening experience. It is a masterful, almost mesmeric achievement.
Scott William Urquhart & Constant Follower – Even Days Dissolve
Both McAll and Urquhart have used music to come to terms with traumatic events in their own lives, and this album carries an aura of healing in a very real sense: working through emotional and physical hardship first to remember that beautiful things can exist in the world and then to actually create something beautiful. So while it is suffused with melancholy, it is also spiked with joy. The mesmerising title track builds in quietly surprising layers, like a painting that seems to become more intricate the longer you look at it. It can be mildly disconcerting – you never quite know whether to look at the panorama or the details – but this is the nature of art that is born from difficult experience. Once you immerse yourself in Even Days Dissolve, it becomes an immensely rewarding, sensual listen, ripe with understated strength.
Shirley Collins – Archangel Hill
The album’s more unusual moments are also some of its most rewarding. High And Away, an original with lyrics by Pip Barnes, is partly taken from an account in Collins’ recent book of a 1959 meeting with Arkansas singer Almeda Riddle. It’s a wonderful moment of musical serendipity, where you can see tradition changing and stories cross-pollinating before your eyes. How Far Is It To Bethlehem? is a surprising and tender rendition of a carol that started life as a rhyme in a Christmas card by Frances Chesterton (wife of G.K.). Best of all is the title track, which ends the album. Backed by a wandering melody plucked out on impressionistic strings, it is a spoken hymn to Collins’ home county and seems to contain all the wisdom that she has accrued, all the history that has made her folk songs some of the most important and enjoyable in the English tradition. It’s not so much that she is making up for all the time she has lost: this album and its predecessors seem almost to relish their maturity. Either way, at 87, she is still making some of the finest music of her career.
Georgia Shackleton – Harry’s Seagull
Created out of minimal ingredients, Harry’s Seagull shows just how invigorating traditional music can be and how old songs sung with affection and skill can sparkle like new. It’s a love letter to a specific corner of England and its unique heritage, but it is also universal in its appeal. Georgia Shackleton’s solo debut is light as a gull’s feather but flush with ideas: it’s one of the freshest and most appealing folk albums of the year.
Brìghde Chaimbeul – Carry Them with Us
It is a quirk of musical fate that some of the most traditional forms can produce the most experimental sounds. Brìghde Chaimbeul is an instrumentalist from Skye who is steeped in the musical and oral traditions of the islands and highlands of Scotland but whose music is as invigorating and new as anything currently being produced in either folk or contemporary avant-garde circles. Carry Them With Us is…an extraordinary experience that has slowly begun to resemble a series of strange, beautiful dream-stories, told with flair, nuance and incredible technical proficiency, but more importantly, with a real sense of ambition and innovation.
Daniel Bachman – When the Roses Come Again
For last year’s Almanac Behind, Daniel Bachman’s third album demonstrating his move into more collage-based soundscapes (The Morning Star and Axacan make up the trio), he turned environmental commentator and delivered an unnerving, dramatic suite of recordings focused on our climate emergency and the potentially disastrous future in store. For When the Roses Come Again, he has returned to the past, with the album taking its name from a Carter Family song and each of its fifteen track titles from the lyrics. …as with Almanac Behind, the music here sounds even more focused again, forgoing radio sounds and leaving field recordings to a minimum, both details enhancing the music and strengthening the overall sound coming through. I love this whole quartet of recent work from Daniel, starting in 2018 with Morning Star, and I think it hangs together as a canon in its own right very well, but When the Roses Come Again is the strongest album of the bunch.
Catrin Finch & Aoife Ní Bhriain – Double You
Reading the biography of Double You, the first collaboration between leading Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and multi-award-winning traditional and classical violinist Aoife Ní Bhriain, the word ‘virtuosic’ is discussed. Rarely has the term found a more justified home than with these two players, but while she is aware of the merits of technically accomplished playing, Finch is keen to explore different sides of music. “Most of the audience don’t actually care about virtuosity at all,” she says. “They just want to come away from a performance having been moved.” These aspects of music, emotion and ability are where this duo excel, and this balance sets Double You apart. …The performances by both musicians are stellar, leaving you thinking that this partnership was inevitable and absolutely necessary. We can only hope that this essential release is the start of a fruitful musical relationship.
Harp – Albion
Tim Smith returns alongside his wife Kathi Zung as Harp. Their debut release, Albion, sounds old and new at the same time. It is a point of departure and a new beginning. The wait is over, and the weight of ten years of expectations has been fulfilled. …Together, they have created new waves of hope as the dark winter approaches. Being able to see our way through the dark days ahead, we can see there are new beginnings and second chances.
Joanna Sternberg – I’ve Got Me
Joanna Sternberg is an utterly distinctive songwriter and performer. There are very few singers currently exploring contemporary subjects like anxiety and emotional insecurity with such warmth, humour and deftness of touch. I’ve Got Me is a sweet, smart and sometimes sad document that, like many of the most individual works of art, exists beyond genre.
Lisa O’Neill – All Of This Is Chance
With All Of This Is Chance, Lisa O’Neill lets her own creative wings spread, unleashing every ounce of elation, despair and love that her music emanates. It’s an epic canyon of sense and sound. …Lisa O’Neill has crystallized her place in the world as a performing artist and created a timeless piece of work, wholly unbound by style or genre, a universal shot of medicinal magic from which we should all take understanding and move forward with open-eyed wonder for the world in which we live.
Meg Baird – Furling
Meg Baird’s ‘Furling’ is unlike anything she has done before. Impressively, she and Charlie Saufley recorded every instrument and the intimacy of their musical connection is plain to see. Baird has mastered the balancing act between maturity and eclecticism perfectly, and the results are spellbinding.
Salt House – Riverwoods
Riverwoods is an album of stirringly gorgeous music that fully delivers its message about the importance of nature, its inherent beauty in our world, and how we need to maintain it. It is a concise, perfectly honed piece of art that elegantly plays to its performers’ strengths. It weaves a set of songs that are spare in structure and spacious enough to allow each note, confidently and precisely played, to resonate with the listener. It’s an exceptional record.
Alice – L’Oiseau Magnifique
If you could imagine Ivor Cutler, Ron Geesin and John Shuttleworth creating music together as a trio, then I suggest that their output would still not be as outré and quirky as that currently being created by Switzerland’s Alice, as exemplified on their latest release L’Oiseau Magnifique. …a beguiling album of musical collages, replete with eccentric wit and crystalline vocals and harmonies; if you expect the unexpected, you will not be disappointed.
The Circling Sun – Spirits
With Spirits, The Circling Sun have managed to produce an album which succeeds in paying due respect to the African American greats of jazz whilst simultaneously imbuing their compositions with a passionate South Pacific empathy and insight. With hot, balmy summer nights hopefully on the horizon here in the UK, there could be no better way to chill out than to enter the orbit of the cool sounds on this album.
Chris Brain – Steady Away
Steady Away is everything a second album should be; it stays with a formula that worked very well on his debut and adds depth and guts. The writing has been elevated, as has the playing, and there is confidence at every turn, as the handling of the final song suggests. At once intelligently written and considerately handled by all involved, this is an excellent album by a musician really starting to bloom.
Nick Hart & Tom Moore – The Colour of Amber
Hart’s voice on this album sounds better than ever, more lived in, excelling in the musical partnership with Tom Moore. The Colour of Amber breaks new ground musically, the viola and viol combination creating a unique setting that sounds both ancient and completely fresh, capable of adding richness and depth to the songs and tunes. This first album from the duo stands head and shoulders above just about any other English traditional album of the last few years.
Rachel Sermanni – Dreamer Awake
The musicianship throughout the album is exemplary, from Sermanni but also from her band, which includes guitarists Paul Santner and Elio Evangelou, drummer Max Andrjewski, and bassist James Banner. Sermanni gave her colleagues a certain amount of freedom, which accounts for the loose and jazzy feel and the moments of weird and spellbinding experimentalism, but you never lose sight of the fact that this is very much her project: it almost has an Astral Weeks level of what you could call ‘unconstrained control’, a heady mixture of clear-sighted creative objectives and willingness to innovate. Essentially, Dreamer Awake is the sound of a spectacularly gifted songwriter growing personally and artistically in the face of pain and difficulty.
Lankum – False Lankum
False Lankum is the Dublin group’s fourth album as a quartet and their most uncompromising to date. It is not so much a retreat down the rabbit hole as a bold statement of intent and an example of how new ideas can still enliven old forms. …Sprinkled throughout the album are three short fugues that act like the chapter breaks in a Godard film. They are not meant as palate cleansers in the way that interludes often are; instead, they are like little musical puzzles, ways to engage the listener more actively with the way the sounds are being created. In a way, they hold the key to Lankum’s highly individual approach to music-making: a discourse between band and listener that is challenging, raw, brutally honest and always rewarding.
Angharad Jenkins and Patrick Rimes – amrwd
Welsh folk due Angharad Jenkins and Patrick Rimes collaborate on their debut album as a duo with amrwd (the Welsh for ‘raw’). As founding members of multi-award-winning band CALAN, they have a long-established reputation as two of the finest instrumentalists on the Welsh folk scene and their debut certainly doesn’t disappoint. Their masterful playing thrills throughout, and the considered compositions constantly surprise and please. amrwd is a delightful recording and ensures that, as accomplished stewards of tradition, Welsh folk is in very safe hands.
The Far Sound – The Far Sound
Everything you know is wrong. The Far Sound, a new solo project by Rick Pedrosa, makes one realize that what you hear is based on what you know. Throughout The Far Sound, the music is based on shattering old patterns and playing in ways one wouldn’t expect from Western instruments. Along the way, it becomes evident that this Portland, Oregonian, shifts expectations to the point that it’s like you are hearing music for the first time. …Nothing short of fascinating, Rick Pedrosa’s The Far Sound defies categorization. Marvellous and mystifying, the aural landscape of The Far Sound is simply unlike anything ever experienced before, making music that goes in a most unexpected direction, creating a sonic timepiece where worlds meet.
Bex Burch – There is Only Love and Fear
The compositions and improvisations of Yorkshirewoman Bex Burch are characterised by an all-encompassing internationalism which rides roughshod over perceived notions of place and border. The classically-trained percussionist defines her music as ‘messy kinda minimalism’, which calls to mind the transatlantic tradition of experimental music, a sort of DIY John Cage perhaps, but which in reality is more complex and more interesting than that. …This feels like an album made possible by the kindness of strangers, so it’s no surprise that the joy of collaboration shines through on the recordings. Even on a track called This is the sound of one voice, it’s difficult to ignore the close human contact that charges this music with irresistible vigour. All this adds up to a wholly distinctive musical language, a jazz-inflected improvisational world music that quotes from minimalism without ever being in thrall to its history. When you consider that There is Only Love and Fear is Bex Burch’s solo debut, that’s quite some feat.
The Lilac Time – Dance Till All The Stars Come Down
I’ve followed and been an admirer of Stephen Duffy’s music through his many incarnations, from the rough-edged sounds of The Subterranean Hawks through the still iconic Kiss Me (in its different versions, including the 1982 original with Mulligan and Dik Davis of Fashion and the Top 10 hit of 1985 ) to his early house identity as Dr Calculus, solo albums, The Devils with Nick Rhodes and the ongoing country-folk inflected English pastoral pop of The Lilac Time. Never once have I been disappointed. …this latest offering is magnificent; it will make your heart dance until the stars come down.
Shana Cleveland – Manzanita
Much of my knowledge of California is informed by the pop culture of the late 60s and 70s – a magical place of endless sunshine, creative freedom and flower-power peace. Shana Cleveland’s most recent solo LP ‘Manzanita’ – aptly named after the native Californian tree that resides in her garden – confirms that the rumours might be true. …It is a rare thing to be able to listen to an album as many times as I have and be led down a different road each time. Upon first listening, ‘Manzanita’ is a beautiful and sonically satisfyingly album with well-written singles, but the real depth is found in its completeness, in its consuming, hypnotising curiosity and unapologetic declaration of love on a trip along the Pacific Coast Highway.
You Are Wolf – hare // hunter // moth // ghost
The final track, Blue Men, has a beguiling, whispered intro, some dramatic backing vocals and a melodic final section that is darkly, disarmingly beautiful. It’s a song that is full of strange components perfectly aligned, and that might be the key to the whole album: Andrew is masterful when it comes to this kind of alchemy; they can turn small or rough or difficult things into moments of bright wonder. In You Are Wolf’s hands, transformation is a gift to be celebrated.
Max ZT and Dan Whitehouse – Ten Steps
Ten Steps is a collaborative album from Brooklyn, NY and Tokyo/Black Country Pathfinders Max ZT (hammered dulcimer player of House of Waters) & Dan Whitehouse, who has featured on Folk Radio a number of times over the years. After being brought together through the Global Music Match programme in 2021, they later went on tour when this album was recorded live in the UK, New York City and Tokyo. As I said when premiering Shizuka, I found their music deeply intuitive, poetic and rewarding because they are so unhindered and open. They said, “we yearn to get outside of our own heads and see the world from another’s perspective”, and they have achieved that in the humblest of ways. Like all the albums on this list, this has been regularly played…a deeply rewarding album.
Arthur Russell – Picture of Bunny Rabbit
Russell’s music has given me so much joy I just couldn’t leave this one out. These nine tracks have been hauled from the archive and given life – all previously unreleased performances. A luminous offering that, placed by the side of his groundbreaking ‘World of Echo’, is a mind-blowingly beautiful album…it again shines a light upon the genius of Arthur Russell, a life cut short—an essential album.
Joseph Allred – New Jerusalem
Regardless of the tonal shift that New Jerusalem represents for Allred, it is still an album that resonates on many of the same thematic frequencies as their earlier work. Their back catalogue can almost be read as a single theological discussion (though I hasten to add that it is much more than that), and the theological thread runs through this record too. Wine Song, the closing track, is a case in point, coming across like a synthesis of earthly and divine pleasures. Even in the instrumental tracks, like the languid psych-prog of Reprise (A Vision), have their part to play in the discourse, creating shimmering soundscapes that are devotional or visionary in their tone but still retain a very human heart. A key to this is Allred’s method of recording: they played and recorded everything themselves, and this level of control enables quick shifts between the cosmic and the cosmopolitan and results in a multilayered album that is often intriguingly dense but never far away from a state of euphoria.
BCMC – Foreign Smokes
Glenn Kimpton: There is reverb across this whole record, but due to the spacious nature of this piece, its drenching is all the more noticeable and lends the music the astral vibe appropriate to its title. The fade out to drone is a fitting end to an album that plays out like one continual experimental, inquisitive journey rather than a set of four songs. Its improvised nature also gives it an appealing freshness and dynamism, while the ability of both players ensures interest at every turn. This album is ace; I love it.
Dom Flemons – Traveling Wildfire
…the real story here always returns to the man at centre stage, for it is his reflections, meditations, hopes and fears acquired throughout recent years of travel and evolving musical discovery that fuel this collection. At times the album seems almost apocalyptic in nature; central songs hover with hands on the lever to the trapdoor of climate and social catastrophe that humanity currently stands heavy over. Happily, though, the one thing that keeps Dom Flemons engaged and inspired is his indelible belief in the magic and wonder of music. It is that spirit which rises to the fore so definitively on this deep, indispensable new album.
Unthank : Smith – Nowhere And Everywhere
In a fusion of musical styles, Rachel Unthank of sibling folk duo The Unthanks and Maximo Park frontman Paul Smith come together to create a stunning celebration of telling stories. Nowhere and Everywhere is a triumph, an amalgamation of musical style and defiance of genre, one that celebrates and commemorates the experiences of ordinary people.
David A. Jaycock – Hold.Star.Return
Hold. Star. Return sees him explore more fully the world of antique electronica. In some ways, it is an attempt to recreate the sounds of his late-70s and early-80s youth, from the drum machine and synth experiments of the Sheffield scene to the soundtracks of those strange BBC sci-fi series, via disco and the trippy, post-industrial folk of Current 93. But as is often the case with Jaycock’s work, there are further layers to be explored: personal reflections on the turbulent politics of the time, explorations of place, a constant awareness of the slippery nature of memory and time. …a weirdly beautiful album which manages to be constantly aware of the past and yet never sentimental.
Cian Nugent – She Brings Me Back To The Land Of The Living
This is one of quite a few albums in the list which I purchased on vinyl. Dan Lead’s pedal steel, Ryan Jewell’s relaxed intuitive percussion over Nugent’s vocals and gorgeous guitar lift the weight at the closing of the day. There are also plenty of lyrical highlights throughout, my favourite being: “Sitting here with the window open, I can feel the rain coming in. The lamplight unbroken like some cigarette skin, cast out into a wind to melt away, I’m hearing the sound of the rain again.”
It’s worth repeating here what Cian said about the inspiration behind this album: Meaning can come from surprising places. In 2019, while rehabilitating from a stroke and experiencing aphasia (difficulty with speech and, in her case, a complete inability to speak), my mother began saying: “she brings me back to the land of the living”, seemingly out of nowhere and with little knowledge of its origin or meaning. The phrase seemed fortuitous and mysteriously meaningful. It stuck with me, while I was working on the songs that became this album, and it gained further meaning when in 2020, I moved back to my family home in the Dublin suburbs to become a caretaker for her. This lifestyle change and the new role provided purpose, and it also helped conceptually form this album. And, in a sense, provided a return for me to the land of the living. The songs here act as a way of processing change and accepting new futures. The album cover is a painting made by my mother, Kathy Nugent, in 2019 while in the hospital. It served as inspiration and guidance during the album’s production. Seek this one out (preferably on vinyl).
Martin Simpson & Thomm Jutz – Nothing But Green Willow
Rarely does a collection of songs stop you in its tracks by its sheer loveliness and authentic approach to tradition, but this remarkable collection, finely curated by Martin Simpson and Thomm Jutz, is such a recording. On paper, it is a worthy collection of contemporary singers tackling traditional Appalachian songs, but on listening, it is also an invigorating, inspiring, and downright beautiful experience. …Nothing But Green Willow: The Songs of Mary Sands And Jane Gentry is a genuinely stunning, life-affirming, and beautifully produced listening experience. It’s an instant classic.
Ben Chasny & Rick Tomlinson – Waves
Recorded at home in Todmorden, there’s a warming modesty about this informal yet devotional set of tunes. The guitar strings don’t sound pingingly bright and new, so we get a sense of old friends at ease, simply picking up their instruments and playing. Open tunings are clearly in use here with chords that, weirdly, sound neither major nor minor. …Of the recording process, Chasny says, “We hiked around the countryside, climbed into church bell towers, drank delicious beer on sunny afternoons and had fantastic dinners. I really had the best time in the world. I think all of that wound up in the music”. He’s right, for Chasny and Tomlinson have made an album in which we feel the warm vibrations of their dreams and visions.
Cinder Well – Cadence
The first thing you hear on Cadence, the new album by Cinder Well, is Amelia Baker’s voice. It is positioned high up in the mix, its clarity leavened by a barely perceptible raspiness. That very first line, ‘Crick in the side of the frozen moon,’ contains within it the kernel of what makes Baker’s music so compelling – the wildness and candour, the strength and vulnerability, the impressive eye for the details of the natural world, details that can be both vivid and easy to miss. Nature, landscape and history loom large over Cadence, but in ways that are more subtle than you might expect: the memory of the Irish landscape, where Baker has spent much of her recent past, is juxtaposed with the California coast she calls home, and where the album was recorded. And, as well as a juxtaposition of landscape, there is also a mingling of musical elements: Gaelic folk rubbing shoulders with the Laurel Canyon sound to produce a sound that is both more mature and more raw than previous Cinder Well releases. …An album about the journeys we make through life, Cadence is itself something of a journey. Meandering, non-linear, but full of care and wisdom, it is an astonishingly powerful piece of work that seems to have been conceived in uncertainty but realised with the supreme assurance of one of the most consummate songwriters around.
Spirit Fest – Bear in Town
Sometimes, words can get in the way. While that may seem surprising for a multi-national aggregation like Saya and Takashi Ueno of Tenniscoats, Notwists Markus Acher and Cico Beck, and Jam Money’s Mat Fowler, their unique ability to make do with the bare minimum manages to generate the sound of Spirit Fest. The bass, drums and voice that open Kou-Kou Land, along with the straightforward stop-and-go texture of the song, create something truly gorgeous. The single notes played on the piano only add to the summery simplicity. Magic is in the air, and this music has plenty of it. …Unfolding at its own pace, Spirit Fest finds the mystical core of their music on Bear in Town. Not a moment is truly rushed, unfolding precisely, forging musical connections that touch the soul of what makes us human.
Storm the Palace – La Bête Blanche
Storm the Palace‘s La Bête Blanche is folk at heart, but it pilfers in turn from the aligned spheres of pop, punk and rock, each chorus more gleeful than the last, as it takes aim at anything joyless, priggish or conventional. Where it reaches its howling, pantomime-angry zenith – as on The Witch Bitch – the energy and relish in the performance is palpable: lyrics like ‘She’s a witch, she’s a witch, from her tail to her tits’ deserve a certain theatrical flair, and Storm the Palace don’t disappoint. …If the sheer breadth of reference and influence seems like it might be overwhelming, then rest assured there is an openness to La Bête Blanche, a delight in music’s power to elucidate complex ideas simply, and with good humour, that makes it anything but a difficult listen. Whatever genre they happen to be joyously ransacking, Storm the Palace are masters of the art of communicating.
L Con – The Isolator
Lisa Conway’s (aka L Con) The Isolator is an adventurous foray into self-interrogation, where the composer delves into the implications of her dual citizenship on her identity. The Swiss-Canadian singer-songwriter started working on the album at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, when – like many musicians – she found herself “navigating a calendar otherwise wiped blank”. Conway took up online piano lessons, working with a teacher who encouraged her to lean into what felt comfortable, and she explains: “I finally gave myself permission to fully live in sound worlds and lean into writing tendencies that are very instinctual and restorative to me.” …The title track, The Isolator, seems like the most boilerplate song on the album. At first, starting out as a piano ballad, it builds into a string sweeping string ensemble when the drums and the backing vocals come in. It’s hard to describe the melancholy, the regret at a future that hasn’t yet happened, and the nostalgia for a past that never took place without listening to those strings. Go listen.
Juni Habel – Carvings
Songwriter Juni Habel writes and sings with a distinctive voice. She lives with her beloved grandmother and close-knit family in an old converted schoolhouse in the tiny village of Rakkestad in the rural hinterland of Norway some way south of Oslo – and yet there’s nothing remote-sounding about her music. It communicates immediately and draws you straightway into her world – it’s a world that’s at once conversational and other-worldly, of today and of an earlier era, familiar and new-minted. It’s hard to explain; I guess “pastoral folk” is the most convenient tag for now, but the expansive perspective from which Juni writes can be seen to reach beyond the usual confines of that sub-genre. …Carvings is a captivating musical and poetic experience, a fearless conception that is thoroughly contemporary while almost traditional in its authenticity of expression and directness of communication. Juni is a voice that needs to be heard.
Lucy Farrell – We Are Only Sound
It seems almost unthinkable that We Are Only Sound is Lucy Farrell’s first solo album. The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has been part of the furniture on the British folk scene for a number of years. …The title track, which finishes the album, has more than a hint of the epic about it: dramatic keys, knuckly electric guitars, a swirl of electronics and wordless backing vocals and a refrain that gathers the threads of the album together. It’s a brilliant way to sign off, underlining what has gone before with an assured flourish. It may have taken a while, but with We Are Only Sound, Lucy Farrell has given us a bold debut album of rare sophistication and a moving document of an emotional few years.
Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2
Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2 forms a perfect complement to the dawning of spring. It reemerges, holding a looking glass to who we are and still manages to offer hope for what we might become. Although just one man with a pedal steel guitar, Cullum examines a world of endless possibilities. As he notes, “I sat for a long time with the songs and wanted to find my own identity.” He and his “nice little crowd of weirdos” have created something truly magical.
Bill Orcutt – Jump On It
For Jump on It, Bill pulled a Harmony Sovereign out of the closet and stripped it of two strings before recording. With a slightly shorter scale and sweeter tone, the Harmony epitomises the sound Bill achieves on this album. Having naturally shifted to a less aggressive and more pensive approach in recent years, starting with 2017’s Bill Orcutt, his first solo electric album, Jump on It feels calm and even quiet in places. On many tracks, like the gently probing Some Hidden Purpose, you hear the sound of Bill’s breathing, a stark contrast to the dramatic non-syllabic howling that haunts his other acoustic releases and another detail that illustrates the intimate and more content nature of this recording. …In a Column of Air is the most mercurial song here, moving from loosely improvised in structure to tightly repetitive towards the end. At once complex, clear, direct and primitive, it’s a song that sums up this excellent album.
Damir Imamović – The World and all that it Holds
What a fascinating project this is. Damir Imamović is a world-renowned master of sevdah music, a form of traditional folk music from Bosnia and Herzigova. The genre blends Eastern influences from the Ottoman Empire with traditional Slavic and European melodies and is recognised as a style that evokes a sense of longing, sorrow and perseverance. Imamović was born in Sarajevo into an iconic family of Sevdah players and has since become a master of the art. For his first recording on the American label Smithsonian Folkways, Imamović has again teamed up with legendary producer Joe Boyd and Balkan music expert Andrea Goertler, who he first worked with on his acclaimed 2020 album Singer of Tales. …Beautiful, crystal clear, unpretentious and direct, this set is a triumph and will delight on many levels. Wonderful, multicultural music that is performed with the utmost skill and soul.
Jude Brothers – render tender / blunder sunder
The Arkansas-born, New Mexico-formed artist Jude Brothers lures the listener into a spellbinding, poetic, surprising world with their album render tender / blunder sunder. Calling themselves a vocal shapeshifter, Brothers’ voice sounds at times lamenting and desperate, at others taunting and bold. It’s been a long time since I was as enthralled by a piece of music as I was when I listened to this record.
Libby Rodenbough – Between the Blades
“I know that I am not the only one who needs another world” is a line from the opening track of Libby Rodenbough’s new album ‘Between the Blades‘, and the best description I could offer of it. In just eight tracks, the North Carolina-based bluegrass singer and violinist addresses the 2020s era of existentialism with admirable curiosity and restrained despair. Despite being written during lockdown and the passing of her mother, Libby says the songs are not all about grief but “about trying to keep the faith”. …Between the Blades is a deeply personal and creative exploration of emotions and ideas that are slowly arising in the public conscience. It is an offering of questions, not answers, questions that continue to roll around in my mind as I do the washing up in the form of beautiful, catchy melodies, bringing hope in place of despair.
Mick Flannery – Goodtime Charlie
Mick Flannery is the first international signing to Oh Boy Records, the label the late John Prine set up. On Goodtime Charlie, the gravelly-voiced Co. Cork-born singer-songwriter is again joined by long-time backing band Alan Comerford on guitar, Mikey O’Connell on bass and producer Christian Best behind the drums. He also expands his list of collaborators for his ninth studio album, including three co-writes with Ana Egge. …with a voice and a heart grained by lifetimes beyond his years, Flannery has long been a superstar in Ireland; it’s about time the rest of the world caught up, and this outstanding album should really do the trick.
Yara Asmar – synth waltzes and accordion laments
Lebanese artist Yara Asmar’s bio reads, “Yara Asmar is a musician and puppeteer currently living in Beirut with her two cats, Mushroom and Fejlé.” Humble and simple, this album was quite a revelation…even the song titles have an otherworldly intimacy to them: three clementines on the counter of a blue-tiled sun-soaked kitchen. The album was described as vulnerable, intimate and moving. Recorded at home using lo-fi recording processes and also featuring her grandmother’s Hohner Marchesa accordion, her soundscapes may be from tiny personal worlds but they are also remarkable sonic jewels. There really isn’t another album like it.
The Furrow Collective – We Know by the Moon
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.
Black Duck – Black Duck
Guitarist Bill Mackay has been playing intelligent, underrated music for years now, collaborating with Ryley Walker (I think everyone here has collaborated with Ryley Walker at some stage), Nathan Bowles and Bill Callahan, among many others. Guitarist and bassist Douglas McCombs is a Chicago mainstay, best known for his pioneering band Tortoise, but cropping up most recently on Mute Duo’s Migrant Flocks album (reviewed here). Drummer Charles Rumback has been on the Chicago improvised music scene for many years and has put out some cracking duo albums with Ryley Walker )(read the review of LIttle Common Twist); he has also worked with Chicagan pianist Jim Baker on recordings. Credentials galore, you might say, and thankfully this dynamic, experimental set of instrumentals oozes the kind of confidence you would hope for from such a power trio. …Best of all is the final and longest track, Light’s New Measure, a song that uses space and washes of drums and symbols to create a relaxed, calming environment. The restraint that is the key to this piece is where all three players flourish, and the clean backdrop of white silence ensures each note can be heard and appreciated. A very fine conclusion to a splendid album from three musicians of the highest order.
Setting – Shone a Rainbow Light On
When you look at the lineup of Setting, Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly and Joe Westerlund, musicians who have played in groups like Pelt and Mind over Mirrors, the basic premise of four long-form drone-based songs making up Shone a Rainbow Light On will not surprise you that much, but this album still has several modest tricks up its sleeve. For a start, the sound is remarkably egalitarian; you can hear each player performing their part on each song, but the set-up and the mix result in a perfect balance of each musician’s role. There is no frontman here, no stand-out player. …Shone a Rainbow Light On is an unusual beast; there is no pretence here, and no performer is trying to overdo things. The overall mood is relaxed and confident, but there are details that will be missed on the first few listens. For all its space and organic spirit, there is a complexity present that the band allows the listener to discover at their leisure. I would certainly recommend doing so.
Mutual Benefit – Growing at the Edges
After natural disasters, there are those spots where lifeforms begin to spring up; those are the spots that interest Mutual Benefit’s Jordan Lee, the places where life begins again, Growing at the Edges. The moments where the conditions for rebirth occur have become a lifeline for him. Amongst the death and decay, life regenerates and with it are the conditions where change can occur. Despite the horrors of the past, tiny blades of green emerge, much like the music Lee has created.
D.C Cross – Wizrad: Adventures into Ecstatic Guitar (and Madcap Ambient)
As you might expect from the title of Australian guitar whizz Darren Cross’s fourth album – Wizrad: Adventures into Ecstatic Guitar (and Madcap Ambient), there is a gentle sense of humour running through the twelve tracks, with Cross playing some killer guitar while not taking himself too seriously. This is apparent from the off, with the first sound being a recording of a neighbour having overheard Cross practising (‘It’s beautiful… I thought it was the Pied Piper’) and his mildly embarrassed gratitude. …On Rotterdam Hussle, one of my favourites here. Cross plays a picked guitar line akin to a klaxon, while high strings tap out subtle two or three-note runs. The tune is done in less than three minutes, but it displays a fresh and inventive approach to solo guitar playing and works very well as middle man to the more drone or field recording-centric pieces here, giving the whole album a very successful sense of cohesion. This one is a must for fans of the more experimental and adventurous side of the solo acoustic genre, as well as those who enjoy serious acoustic guitar flexing.
Stephen Steinbrink – Disappearing Coin
Weaving disparate elements with a craftsman’s skill, Steinbrink creates touching and tender music, merging them with lyrics that go in unexpected directions. …As whimsy and reality converge, Stephen Steinbrink’s Disappearing Coin lives in a world where rather than appreciating both sides of the coin, one gets focused on one to the exclusion of the other. Yet the coin and the album are multifaceted, and we gain as much meaning from each side as we do the other. Delightful and endearing, this coin should not disappear without a trace.
Lauren MacColl – Haar
It seems an obvious thing to say, but good music is capable of conjuring vivid visual images. In fact, some instrumental pieces are analogous to abstract art in the way they represent (rather than replicate) a particular subject or mood. Of course, we all experience the world in different ways – those of us with synaesthetic tendencies might hear a certain note and visualise a specific colour, for example – but it’s hard to imagine anyone hearing Haar, the fifth solo album from fiddle and harmonium player Lauren MacColl, without some kind of image, however fleeting, presenting itself. …her creative star shows no sign of waning: in fact, Haar might be her most accomplished and rewarding work to date, an ambitious album of painterly beauty, on which the sadness of experience is offset by the constant awareness of the world’s wonders and complexities.
Dot Allison – Consciousology
Sliding through the slipstream, Dot Allison’s Consciousology creates sonic passageways rarely heard but thoroughly unforgettable. She is the gentlest of explorers, framing landscapes by choosing unexpected aural pathways. With a voice literally floating on air, she merges elements in surprising ways, choosing some of the most audacious instruments while still finding the gentle heart and soul inherent in them. …Dot Allison merges musical worlds, finding ways to not just colour outside the lines but obliterate them altogether. “Consciousology” reinvents musical frameworks, merging sounds and worlds in ways that expand our musical vocabulary.
Makushin – Move into the Luminous
It might be to do with ambient music’s perceived need for length, as opposed to pop’s brevity, or the virtuosity that is ostensibly inherent to jazz compared with the democratic and sometimes homemade flavour of folk music: whatever the reason, the point where these particular forms cross over is relatively unexplored. And, of course, in the wrong hands, these kinds of musical culture clashes can result in a right mess. Getting it right is a hard trick to pull off, but just because something is difficult doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. Makushin have achieved a rare feat: not only have they knitted these various strands together in the most satisfying of ways, they’ve done it seemingly without effort. …an engrossing collection of ten perfect miniatures, each of which plays out like something much longer. They are ambient epics packaged as pop songs, delicate folk latticeworks enmeshed with impassioned jazz. It’s a stunning achievement.
Dougie Poole – The Rainbow Wheel Of Death
Recorded in a spirit of communal joy, Dougie Poole’s ‘The Rainbow Wheel Of Death’ positively struts into view…As the liner notes recall, the album was recorded in a spirit of communal joy, drinking beers and watching movies together at night, and it is this happy spirit that plays out of the speakers, an album staring down dark moments with good (gallows) humour via the shared strength in music.
Úna Monaghan – Aonaracht
Aonaracht means ‘solitude’ or ‘singularity’ in Irish, and that name is telling. Úna Monaghan’s latest album is a negotiation of space, for both the traditional solo musician and the computer. Even though we often associate traditional music with group playing, the Northern Irish composer reminds us that music is about self-expression and uses her work to explore the personal relationship between the musician and their instrument. …the universe she has so carefully constructed is thought-provoking, graceful, and complete, so why would you ever leave?
Liz Hanks – Land
On ‘Land’, an immersive album of depth and subtlety, Liz Hanks helps us understand how a place changes over time. She reads her surroundings like a vast physical palimpsest, peeling away roads and buildings to examine the earthy underbelly, the strata of human activity and natural change. …a deceptively simple album that she transforms into something complex and personal.
Elkhorn – On The Whole Universe In All Directions
On Elkhorn’s On The Whole Universe In All Directions, the guitar duo featuring Jesse Sheppard and Drew Gardner saw the latter swapping electric guitar for vibraphone and percussion. While the shift was surprising, the results are impressive and sublime, once more highlighting not just the duo’s technical ability but also their unshakable confidence and vision.
Me Lost Me – RPG
Me Lost Me playfully weaves together disparate genres, drawing influence from folk, art pop, noise, ambient and improvised music and inspiration from world-building in video gaming, and their new album has had a rich endorsement from Richard Dawson:
The music of Me Lost Me is beguiling, idiosyncratic and cinematic – or should that be video-game-omatic? This suite of songscapes often hits the sweet spot between ancient and modern with its masterful blend of stark folk, neon electronic burbling and unusual arrangements. Jayne’s singing is refreshingly straightforward and nuanced – it’s exquisite! – and perfectly punctures the nebulae of synths and brass which billow around the old wooden frames of the songs. Whilst listening I had images in my mind of what Northumberland might look like through the eyes of Simon Stalenhag – foggy moors, a robot looking across the sea to Lindisfarne, twinkling lights on metal towers…. that sort of thing. It’s a really great album.
The Gentle Good – Galargan
Cardiff-based songwriter and instrumentalist Gareth Bonello, better known by the stage name The Gentle Good, explores traditional song and folklore of his native Wales in his fifth studio album. Galargan is a poignant and profoundly moving intimate set list that Bonello curates through his broader knowledge of the Welsh tradition and folk song. …The Gentle Good’s wisdom of Welsh folksong and histories is both reverential and contemporary, highlighting the vitality of the tradition, while his sensitive arrangements, layered with rich cello and timeless fingerstyle guitar, are palpably ageless. Combined with his deep, rich, haunting vocals, Galargan is a beautifully accomplished and irresistibly engaging album.
Liam Grant – Amoskeag
Amoskeag, Liam Grant’s follow-up to his 2021 debut Swung Heavy: Gitarr for Fanatics, is, according to guitarist Rob Vaughn, ‘a fuckin’ important, much-needed beacon in the dark seas of overproduction, ephemera and watered down, easy-to-sell dullness of today.’ Damn straight; much promise was already shown by Liam on Swung Heavy, an ace homage of sorts to his favourite players that dedicated over half of its run time to cover versions of classic and well-respected guitar tunes. But even back then, Liam was mentioning an album of original material he was feeling excited about, and Amoskeag doesn’t disappoint.
Gunn Truscinski Nace – Glass Band
For Glass Band, Three Lobed have brought together three musicians who have all worked as duos before on several projects – the most current being the Gunn Truscinski duo, who have four albums out on the label. Experimental guitarist Bill Nace is a collaborator at heart, having worked with Kim Gordon on Body/Head, as well as Thurston Moore and Chris Corsano, among others, and his input brings a fresh bent to guitarist Steve Gunn and drummer/synth technician John Truscinski’s already established sound, ensuring this setup feels new and that Glass Band is an equal parts trio album. …Glass Band is an unpretentiously experimental and adventurous album, with lots to discover and each player bringing plenty to the table. It is also a set that rewards, perhaps even demands, repeated listens, which is certainly no hardship.
Jolie Holland – Haunted Mountain
Jolie Holland is not your typical singer. That becomes apparent just from how she sings the first line of 2000 Miles on her new LP, Haunted Mountain. Her phrasing of the word “high” is remarkable; the way she makes it a two-syllable word that goes up deliciously is just the beginning. It’s akin to singing jazz and comes through just as obviously in the music. Genres don’t apply; her songs undergo changes that leave one speechless, trying to find words to describe compositions that don’t fit standard frameworks. …Haunted Mountain functions on so many levels, finding core values that matter with grace and skill that make her unique.
TRÚ – Eternity Near
It’s easy to forget that TRÚ – the Northern Irish trio comprising Michael Mormecha, Zachary Trouton and Dónal Kearney – only released their first album in 2021. That record, No Fixed Abode, arrived with such maturity and assuredness that it sounded like the effort of a group who had been honing their craft for years. Their subtle but incredibly distinctive sound, which rubs shoulders with traditional folk music while always keeping one foot in the present, is perhaps even more sharply defined on their follow-up. Eternity Near’s songs depict strange entanglements and vivid encounters with mortality with an aching clarity born of recent hardships, both global and personal. …the band are keen to point out that the album’s aim is to look past endings to what lies beyond. It’s a scenario that leaves room for both hope and mystery and is an admirably mature move for a group of artists who are still near the beginning of what will undoubtedly be a distinguished career.
Joseph Decosimo – While you were Slumbering
Based in Durham, the creative capital of North Carolina, banjo whiz and folk interpreter Joseph Decosimo has spent the majority of his musical career thus far collaborating with artists like Jake Xerxes Fussell, Elephant Micah and Hiss Golden Messenger. For his solo release, Joseph plays to his strengths, crafting a magical tapestry of old time songs and instrumentals with minimal but effective embellishments from a host of guest players. …Joseph Decosimo’s sound has a haunting quality that lends the old songs he chooses to interpret a certain magic. Quite beautiful instrumentation from all involved combines with unpretentious vocals, giving these songs plenty of power. Seek out While you were Slumbering; it is a special record.
Niall Summerton – What Am I Made Of?
People suffering from depression are often advised to keep a Feelings Journal. The theory is that a written record can help one to see patterns emerge, both emotional and physical. Leeds-based singer-songwriter Niall Summerton has, perhaps, done something similar in the form of his debut album, What Am I Made Of? Suitably lo-fi in construction, these nine songs find Summerton in conversation with himself on a range of mental health issues. …This record was formed in a damp rehearsal room with no windows, using pre-loved instruments and Summerton’s old student housemates. Now it emerges like a survival manual for those facing struggles or stigmas. Summerton has made a winning debut album here, full of tender stories and real-life truths.
Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings
Byrne’s long-time collaborator, producer and – in her words – ‘the family I chose’, Eric Littmann, died unexpectedly during the making of the album. With many of the songs already written, the focus on grief is largely abstract: the songs, labours of love written over a period of years, suddenly – dreadfully – had change forced upon them. The result is an album full of gentle tension where Byrne’s characteristically crystalline, poetic songs with love and hope at their hearts are now presided over by a darker, sadder guiding spirit. The title track is a delicate acoustic ballad with a soaring chorus, but it is also swathed in atmospheric strings and thickened with layers of vocal effects, while Byrne’s voice is foregrounded: we hear every breath, every nuance. …Although it seems uncompassionate to describe someone’s difficult personal circumstances as artistically rewarding, Byrne has proved that music can be transformative and reinvigorating, as well as beautiful. There is hope here beneath the sadness, hope of the most life-affirming kind.
Lee Baggett – Echo Me On
Outsider folk mystic Lee Baggett reaches all-new emotional depths on his latest album, Echo Me On. After first hearing Zipper Ride, a blissful meditation that left me hooked, it was no mean feat to separate out this one from the crowd as an album deserving of being in my top 100. Recorded with a full band, string section and backing singers, this takes Baggett’s music to another level…one that’s peppered with stories from the road. Exceptional.
Marta Del Grandi – Selva
Aptly named ‘Selva,’ which translates to ‘Forest’ in her mother tongue, Italian singer-songwriter Marta Del Grandi‘s new album is a dense thicket of ethereal soundscapes and down-to-earth songs. Written mostly on the road and in Berlin, she takes the voices of tradition and progression and moulds them into something new altogether: “If you dive into my fantasy, I’ll dive into yours.” …Marta del Grandi’s celestial world carves out space for astute pop, experimental electronica, and driving modern folk ballads. It’s a mesmerising place.
Melrose Quartet – Make the World Anew
The album ends with Gabriel’s Baldricks, a tune written by Fagan as a wedding gift for his friends and their new baby. Beginning with a delicate guitar line, it grows into something fuller and more expansive as the rest of the group joins the celebration. In a sense, it is the album in microcosm, not just in its fusion of individual talent and collaborative understanding but also in its exuberance, its willingness to look for joy in every walk of life. The message throughout is one of positivity and optimism, even in the face of hardship, and that is an increasingly rare and important message. Make The World Anew attempts in a small but determined way to achieve the edict set out in its title, and it succeeds resoundingly. It is also The Melrose Quartet’s most upbeat and accomplished album to date.
This is the Kit – Careful of Your Keepers
Kate Stables is simply one of those artists not content to sit on her laurels. She is constantly reinventing her music, challenging the conventions without ever seeming to overstep. With the help of Super Furry Animals’ Gruff Rhys on production duties, This is the Kit defies the assumptions of what is typically done in the field of contemporary folk music. She seems almost to be a force of nature, bending music to her will, creating and refining contexts almost at will. With Careful of Your Keepers, she has created her own magic lantern, ever changeable, ever intriguing. This is the Kit are not a band of the moment; they own the moment.
Milkweed – The Mound People
There are moments of strange and unexpected beauty scattered throughout The Mound People, not least on the lysergic Stallion Fights and the bewildering, dreamlike loops of closer Blackbird’s Nest. The singing is stunning throughout, and the poignant melodies percolate through each song, coming to the surface at unexpected junctures. It’s hard to find tangible reference points for music this different, and this interesting. Perhaps if Hedy West, the Moldy Peaches and Broadcast happened to meet at a Julian Cope convention, something like this might have been the result, or perhaps we have to look to literature or film for closer antecedents – the books of Alan Garner or the television of Nigel Kneale. But more than anything else, The Mound People is a uniquely eerie musical experience, a distorted vision of a half-hidden past.
Steve Gunn & David Moore – Reflections Vol.1: Let the Moon be a Planet
For this project, the chameleon-like singer songwriter and guitarist Steve Gunn teamed up with minimalist pianist and fellow New Yorker David Moore to create a new musical dialogue, remotely at first, exploring each player’s improvisations. Significantly, the sessions happened at a time when Gunn was experimenting with the classical guitar, a warmer-sounding instrument than his usual steel string and one that informs the overriding character of this ruminative set of instrumentals. …As a move away from the pair’s usual ‘detail-oriented’ approach to making music, Let the Moon be a Planet feels improvised and free in nature. Still, its natural idiosyncrasies and fine nuances invite and reward deep listening—a quietly rich, contemplative and satisfying experience.
Mute Duo – Migrant Flocks
Migrant Flocks is the third album from Chicago pedal steel player Sam Wagster and percussionist Skyler Rowe, and their second for American Dreams after 2020’s Lapse of Passage. Although mostly sticking to the percussion and pedal steel parameters that have graced two previous albums, the band do add some vibraphone, drum machine, and programming touches to the sound, which shifts things away from the dustier audio of Lapse of Passage into a thicker and more physical sound. Added bass from fellow Chicagans Douglas McCombs and Andrew Scott Young also brings texture, with the wonderful flute of Emma Hospelhorn on The Ocean Door lending a new dimension to the music. …an intriguing and versatile record of real creative endeavour.
The Saxophones – To Be A Cloud
The Saxophones create a mood that is entirely their own. The duo make music that is deceptively risky, balancing on a knife edge: on one side is a kind of chilled-out, margaritas-at-the-mall apocalyptica and on the other is a combination of widescreen, salt-tinged psychedelia and dusky bar-room jazz, where big skies and big ideas vie with personal heartache and subdued, nostalgic longing. Undercurrents of fuzzy country, sophisticated chamber-pop, shoegaze and bedroom pop swirl together. …This is mature and constantly surprising music that exists in its own sphere but nevertheless resonates profoundly with the outside world.
Rozi Plain – Prize
Rozi Plain has a wonderful way of leading us into a room and slowly walking us around it, revealing its details to us one by one. Her new album, Prize, is a beautiful follow-up to her 2019 album What A Boost, which secured her status amongst indie circles throughout the UK. While many of her familiar idiosyncrasies have been carried into this record, there is a feeling that the sound has been developed and expanded upon.
Sam Burton – Dear Departed
Sam Burton seems to be saying goodbye on his second album, Dear Departed, casting aside parts of himself he no longer has use for. Having had a break-up, without a job, minus a place to live and no record deal, he worked on a farm to make ends meet. Writing Dear Departed became a way to fend off the boring nature of repairing the roof of an old friend’s house in Utah. He notes, “The more boring the work was, the more meditative I found it.” Eventually, he moved to a farm in Northern California owned by another friend’s grandmother, working the fields to pay his way. …Through a long journey, the young rebel has created the kind of music that can make you swoon. Sam Burton has found a way to hook into old school sounds and, with the help of Wilson, has created Dear Departed, a lush and lovely album that speaks to the heart and the soul.
All the best for 2024
Alex